In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Learn more…
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We’ve tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the “official” Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other “Privacy Guides” communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don’t ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don’t repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don’t abuse our community’s willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- 1 user online
- 1 user / day
- 4 users / week
- 45 users / month
- 395 users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 675 Posts
- 11.2K Comments
- Modlog
IMO switch away from services as fast as you’re comfortable with - it’s not all or nothing. Switch the easy ones now, and build escape plans for the rest. Small steppy is better than no steppy.
This 100%. It’s also worth looking at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/common-misconceptions/#complicated-is-better
Don’t be obsessive about “degoogling” to the point where you pick worser alternatives that don’t have the features you require. Always test something out before doing a mass migration of “all your email” for example.
Totally agree with this. I started with Gmail and calendar and then gradually continued with Gdrive and Gphotos. My browser has always been Firefox, so no problem there. My next step is owning a Google-free phone (keeping an eye on https://tuxphones.com/). The only thing that I can not get rid of is Google Maps. It works so damn good!
I originally had ambitions for a Linux phone but after all my waiting and reasearch it seemed to be too much of a hassle and no gain. After all, you can also have a degooglefied experience with a forked android like LineageOS or GrapheneOS. That’s what I went with.
True. I so much would like to have a pure Linux phone, but they are still not much ready. I do not understand why though. I think there is market for it and tons of Linux apps are already available.
I’d agree with Google EARTH being without alternative, but so far I haven’t really found any gmaps feature that OrganicMaps/OSM doesn’t provide. Maybe I’ve never gotten full use out of gmaps?
Hadn’t heard of Tux Phones before. Any other resources like that?
Unfortunately I do not know any other sources like this one. Tuxphones does not update as they were doing last year either.
replaced it years ago with Organic Maps. The few things googleMaps does better are not worth the huge hole it digs in your privacy
Awesome, thanks for the suggestion.
What do you use for a GDrive alternative?
And for a better GMaps alternative, try OpenStreetMap
As mentioned self-hosted Nextcloud is an option but as my ability to keep things from breaking is really limited which is a big reason why I use the cloud, I am moving on Sync. Other cloud services people often recommend are NordLocker and Tresorit.
Nordlocker is neither open source nor has it been audited. Tresorit at least has audits.
NordLocker was part of Nord Security external ISO27001 audit in 2022. Of course, being closed-source software you can’t really know security fully. The biggest concern seems however to be the encryption model they use in addition to being closed source. However, for example, hosting my own cloud service while most secure really isn’t the option that would answer the reason I use cloud service.
I am not saying use it. I am saying it often gets recommended. I really do think people should do their own research on if things are best fit for them. I am having a huge issue finding actually secure solutions that are not self-hosted and FOSS or at least open source. Nextcloud which is fully hosted by service or on your own bought server space has some concerns as well.
I use a self-hosted Nextcloud server for Gdrive and Photos. Anyone who thinks going self-hosted is hard must watch 1 or 2 Docker videos and buy a minipc for a $150-$200. It is really not that hard. OpenStreetMap unfortunately is not even close what Maps can provide. I have not checked it for a long time though, maybe some drastic improvements have happened lately?
I’m always amazed at how out of touch tech people are with how difficult this stuff is. People say shit like this all the time but when I try it, it most certainly is difficult, and continues to be difficult as time goes on and things stop working.
Well it’s not hard (I have Linux experience), but I’m worried about the time investment to maintain and secure it myself. I’d rather pay someone else to do that for me…
I’m surprised you don’t like OSM, in terms of the actual map it’s much better for me than GMaps. The only thing I still use GMaps for is to see reviews of restaurants etc.
Not who you were discussing with but i hope its ok to throw in my 2 centavos.
Traffic. Google has traffic.
On the other hand I was just at a place where Google maps was very wrong and OSM using organic maps, was accurate. The new roads went in 6 months ago, so it’s not like it just happened.
Now you made me curious :) I will definitely take a look at it. Thanks.
No worries, if you also want to use it on your phone be sure to check out the OsmAnd or Organic Maps app.
On the other hand OpenStreetMap seems to provide things that Google Maps doesn’t like a lot of paths and trails, including inclination & difficulty info.
Didn’t know this, thank you.
Yes, way more up to date for most thongs, and it doesn’t clutter the map full of ads.
Google Maps has been good for street view, though. I only use it account free and in an isolated/VPN tab. 😂