A process that started roughly a year ago with just changing browser and search engine, now feeling that I got somewhere. The journey ended up being more than just degoogle, but also demetaing and taking more control over my data and privacy.
Before and after picture with notes:
Chrome -> Zen browser (Firefox on iOS)
Google -> Qwant
Gmail -> Proton Mail
NordVPN -> Proton VPN (I don’t use VPN very often, but have NordVPN through another subscription, now replaced with Proton across my devices)
Google Drive / Photos -> Proton Drive
Google Password Manager -> Proton Pass
Google Authenticator -> Proton Pass / Ente (Ente Auth is only used to store my 2FA keys for the Proton account, other keys are stored in Proton Pass)
Google Translator -> DeepL
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
Google Maps -> Magic Earth (OSM on desktop)
WhatsApp -> Signal
Notion -> Anytype
Keep / Notes -> Notesnook
X -> Mastodon / Bluesky
Reddit -> Lemmy (Voyager on iOS, dreaming of an eventual complete migration)
Instagram -> Pixelfed
Facebook -> stopped using
Windows 11 -> Ubuntu (Only personal laptop, work laptop still windows)
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Am I only one who doesn’t like proton services?
For some reasons, I don’t get the OTP emails in proton mail. Just the OTP emails…
Imagine spending 1k USD and then Not using any what you paid for lmao
Wdym? 😭
Isnt iPhone already degoogled?
Yes, but iOS is even more closed than Android which makes all iPhones a small prison for open-minded and privacy oriented people.
Google is Big Tech, logs everything. Apple is Big Tech too, but only logs tiny less than Google. All Big Tech is a big no-no if you’re privacy oriented. This applies to all services that uses Big Tech, too.
I feel like my story is a lot similar to yours almost a year ago now I saw a YouTube video about degoogling. It caused me to switch to Firefox with betterfox on the betterfox github pages there was a new oil link which I read and followed ultimately leading me to all of this and so much more.
Wow, thenewoil website is great. Thanks for sharing.
Saved! Good work and thank you.
Try Impressia for PixelFed
Saving this post. I have been deGoogling as much as I can but havent done the research to find some of these options. Thanks
So you start with an iPhone…
Why don’t you put an edgy sticker on it?Gotta start with what you have 🤷
Somehow I think you may have had a choice about what phone you buy.
I have had the same phone for the past 3 years, so the degoogle process started a couple of years after I got it.
I want to use Signal but can’t convince everyone to get on it
The US DoD uses it
Is that a good or bad? Could go both ways 🤭
And they hand out invitations to group chats
Matrix/element doesn’t make you give out a phone #
That’s not why most people aren’t on Signal.
Neither do signal anymore i think
Them dropping sms took away a big carrot for adoption though.
Them dropping sms took away a big carrot for adoption though.
Still miss that feature everytime I get an SMS or have to send an sms if data isn’t working.
Nope, they still require a number.
From their site:
Requiring phone numbers in Signal lets people see which of their friends they can easily talk to on Signal while limiting the potential for spam within the app.
There are options to spoof a number in the States, and probably some areas of th EU, but many other places are SOL.
They absolutely do, but you can hide that behind a username after you’ve registered now. But you still have to come up with a number to register a new account.
What’s unwatched?
YouTube player app. Open source, no ads, no login, just import your subscriptions and playlists and you’re ready to go.
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
I see Proton and Bluesky. Appreciable effort, but it can be done better.
I mean, it the end it’s all up to personal preferences. I’m strongly considering to delete Bluesky due to the latest controversy. But would you care to elaborate?
Not many people have resources to set up a mastadon instance and I don’t think bluesky can be connected using activitypub but I’m not sure about that.
Proton’s ceo has recently made some Trump sympathizer statements but honestly, I’ll still keep my subscription because of how cheap they are for me.
I didn’t like the statements regarding Trump either, but he deleted it and made some comment/post on reddit distancing himself from Trump and right wing politics. So I made peace with that, but yeah, people won’t forget.
Not sure why people care so much, the individual can think whatever he wants, it hasn’t stopped proton from continuing on its good path (even though I don’t use them much nowadays, they are a great service with a respectable free tier).
Trust in a product can be weaponized.
Also, as a Roman, I would never trust a Swiss. Call it genetic memory.
That article is stupid. Any company that receives a “legally binding order” has to comply with it… what would you expect?
Most companies aren’t going to commit a crime to protect a user (like that one dude who ran an email service and destroyed it when he was required to hand over data, forgot his name!!!). If they did, they’d be out of business…
(The article isn’t exactly dumb, but it doesn’t address this properly in my opinion. The outrage over it seems dumb to me. The government will force companies to do whatever it wants, be mad at the gov not the corpo in this case when its to apprehend a journalist or whatever… i understand if its a terrorist or similar, but this specific case may be more poopy om the gov behalf)
If you had nothing, as you said you would have, you would have nothing to provide to the authorities.
This is exactly what happened with Mullvad: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692580/mullvad-vpn-raid-sweden-police
I know that this may be a requirement in Switzerland, that is why I would not use a Swiss product in the first place.
How you liking Voyager? I’m bouncing between Arctic and Thunder atm, one day I’ll find the perfect lemmy client.
Mlem is competent, but isn’t especially good at anything, and lacks some features the others offer
(Not OP)
At the moment I use both mlem and voyager. Personally I find that everyday browsing is a nicer experience using mlem, especially since their recent-ish 2.0 update. Though it’s missing many of the fancier features that voyager has (eg drafting posts). The user tagging voyager has is super useful too.
I have not tried other clients. I am quite happy with Voyager, but maybe I will give the others a shot :)
After coming from Apollo and Reddit, at first I was just unhappy that the clients were not great. Once I moved past my grief state I realized Voyager was good enough. I’ve stopped re-evaluating (though I’m sure I will again at some point) and just appreciate what I have.
Voyager is great but you should give Mlem a shot!
As predicted, here come all the purity tests.
I know there’s no way to definitively prove it, but in my mind Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google. I know you can do custom roms and all that, but let’s face it: It’s a huge pain in the ass. I know, I know, “It’s not really”… I beg to differ. I went through my purity phase with degoogled roms and all that. Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of “normal” apps, I gave up and went with an iPhone. Apple’s business model is to sell you the thing at a higher price, thus reducing the incentive to sell your data or enshittify. Yes, that will degrade over time and I’ll reach a threshold at which I’ll reevaluate my options. Given the two major choices, I choose the less terrible ecosystem of the two.
I refuse to have any Google or Meta products on my iPhone. I know that makes me lame here, but we should also understand that any normie would never go to all the trouble of OS tinkering. The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing. Criticizing a person’s degoogle effort as “not good enough” does nothing but drive people directly into the arms of the very evil we wish to diminish. This is a community to banish Google, not everything backed by a for-profit corporation.
This sub is strangely pro Google
I don’t know about the ROMs being a pain in the ass. I did a test run of putting LineageOS on my old Motorola and using adb sucked a little, but once I got it working, it had no issues. I did that so I would know what I was doing for the real purpose of putting GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8a, and they literally had a button on the website that worked like a dream (but only on chromium browser…) and did the process in about 20 mins top. Been using it for almost a year now.
The only issue I’ve had was Google Messages RCS and banking apps. I can live without the wallet and banking apps, and even then, some banking apps work anyway lol (super long GitHub report list about them). RCS was frustrating, but I think it was caused by not deregistering my number from my old iPhone, as it hasn’t conked out again.
I really don’t get what wouldn’t work outside of that. Maybe it’s been a while since you tried android ROMS. Wish I had one as good and debated as GrapheneOS for my Galaxy Tab I just got, but it’s so new that there’s nothing but a GSI for it…
I think your whole post supported my point….
Apple already proved they’ll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.
If it comes down to them selling in the US or not selling in the US, they’re going to roll over and do whatever the government demands.
They’re all so holding all of your data, metrics, and browsing habits securely in their hands.
When the government demands baggacips data, they’re going to hand it over, the same as Google would.
And none of this is ever a problem until the government goes kind of fascist. When browsing privacy subs on Lemmy becomes an act of treason…
Even if I’m not doing anything wrong or illegal, I sure as hell I’m not going to send my data through a VPN that logs and is known to comply with foreign court requests.
You can in fact drive yourself insane trying to stay private and secure, But I do know that trusting a single gigantic monolithic company that operates in a questionable regime to protect you from government entities is a losing battle.
Apple already proved they’ll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.
Did they? They explicitly made a big deal about not doing that for the UK government’s request.
Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google
Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to this paper to explain why.
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
Their platform is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.
Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of “normal” apps
Sounds like you haven’t tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed GPS. Neither of these are issues for me and I’ve been using it for years after switching from iOS.
The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing
Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser
My personal choices are slightly different than yours, but I appreciate your comment. You’re clearly an ally while not being a clone. I often tire of discussions about security and privacy—mainly because I am very pragmatic.
Unlike OP I don’t use Proton’s suite, but considered it. Most of what I want Apple provides (Advanced Data Protection, Private Relay, etc) in a form that meets my minimum requirements. Other things that I use (Signal especially) are well-supported on iPhone.
I’ll talk down Apple all day long in the correct context, but I still believe it is a good choice today. I may re-evaluate at some point in the future when the landscape or my needs change. For now I am very happy.
I’ll just leave this here.
Well pick it back up and take it with you, because this issue has nothing to do with privacy. All major vendors take advantage of evil shit to produce their goods.
All major vendors take advantage of evil shit to produce their goods.
Apple is by FAR the worst when it comes to this stuff
You know our lawmakers have failed when you have to be this concerned about privacy on your own behalf.
it’s really shouldn’t be this much effort in order to retain your data and I know the argument can be made that you just use services that respect it but withouy legislation it’s incentivized to monetize data which makes it extremely hard to find alternatives that don’t.
Agreed; unfortunately, this will always happen as long as money is allowed in politics.
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