I think you need to find a happy medium. I’ve accepted that I can’t control ALL the data I generate, so I instead aggressively block ads and any other marketing attempts towards me.
Yeah, it all boils down to your threat model. Not everyone has the time, resources, or know-how to self-host everything, so it’s about balancing convenience with privacy, which unfortunately is almost one or the other now.
This is kind of my point. I don’t feel there’s a happy middle right now and unless you go tinfoil hat information is going to get out.
My threat model is basically “do my best to be as private as possible”. But there is limits. I can spend $100 cash on gas or I can spend $100 on my credit card and get 2% back. Obviously I’m going to use my credit card. I still email people who use Gmail, People who have the facebook, instagram, X, etc on their phone has me as a contact, likely with my full name, email address, physical mailing address.
So why do I bother keeping my contacts in a selfhosted NextCloud? Why do I avoid the Google Maps app, or anything google when the wife uses all this stuff and I’m with her 90% of the time? I’m starting to think they have my information already anyway so why not welcome google into my life? I have to keep talking myself into the fact that self hosting is worth the extra work I’m causing myself.
For me it boils down to principles. You’re totally right and many companies I hate will have alot of my info due to others, but I’ll be damned if I cooperate with them.
Unfortunately it depends on the individual, so no one can really answer your question but yourself. For me, I draw the line when it personally becomes burdensome to maintain something. For example, I use Bitwarden to manage all my passwords, but I don’t trust myself enough to host and maintain a server and keep it online/secure, so I use their hosted service. I use google drive to store some miscellaneous stuff because of the free 15GB storage, but I don’t store any private files (personal photos, documents, etc.). I use ProtonDrive for more important stuff, and for very confidential files, I encrypt them first. I use google maps for navigation because of reliability and accuracy, but I use a separate google account for it. I know that doesn’t do much, but it keeps some level of separation for me personally. I still maintain a facebook account (although I barely use it) because of family, but I still use a facebook container on firefox and don’t use the mobile app. That plus all the privacy extensions.
The main thing is that it doesn’t have to be black or white. You don’t have to go full hermit, and at the same time you don’t need to fully embed yourself into the google ecosystem. Just do what you can and what you are comfortable with. As they say, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yeah I think the bigger problem here is that it’s this hard to have reasonable privacy and governments like it that way. They don’t need a warrant to buy info, just to force release. I don’t like google knowing everything about me. I hate the cops being a check away from it.
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I think you need to find a happy medium. I’ve accepted that I can’t control ALL the data I generate, so I instead aggressively block ads and any other marketing attempts towards me.
Yeah, it all boils down to your threat model. Not everyone has the time, resources, or know-how to self-host everything, so it’s about balancing convenience with privacy, which unfortunately is almost one or the other now.
This is kind of my point. I don’t feel there’s a happy middle right now and unless you go tinfoil hat information is going to get out.
My threat model is basically “do my best to be as private as possible”. But there is limits. I can spend $100 cash on gas or I can spend $100 on my credit card and get 2% back. Obviously I’m going to use my credit card. I still email people who use Gmail, People who have the facebook, instagram, X, etc on their phone has me as a contact, likely with my full name, email address, physical mailing address.
So why do I bother keeping my contacts in a selfhosted NextCloud? Why do I avoid the Google Maps app, or anything google when the wife uses all this stuff and I’m with her 90% of the time? I’m starting to think they have my information already anyway so why not welcome google into my life? I have to keep talking myself into the fact that self hosting is worth the extra work I’m causing myself.
For me it boils down to principles. You’re totally right and many companies I hate will have alot of my info due to others, but I’ll be damned if I cooperate with them.
Unfortunately it depends on the individual, so no one can really answer your question but yourself. For me, I draw the line when it personally becomes burdensome to maintain something. For example, I use Bitwarden to manage all my passwords, but I don’t trust myself enough to host and maintain a server and keep it online/secure, so I use their hosted service. I use google drive to store some miscellaneous stuff because of the free 15GB storage, but I don’t store any private files (personal photos, documents, etc.). I use ProtonDrive for more important stuff, and for very confidential files, I encrypt them first. I use google maps for navigation because of reliability and accuracy, but I use a separate google account for it. I know that doesn’t do much, but it keeps some level of separation for me personally. I still maintain a facebook account (although I barely use it) because of family, but I still use a facebook container on firefox and don’t use the mobile app. That plus all the privacy extensions.
The main thing is that it doesn’t have to be black or white. You don’t have to go full hermit, and at the same time you don’t need to fully embed yourself into the google ecosystem. Just do what you can and what you are comfortable with. As they say, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Yeah I think the bigger problem here is that it’s this hard to have reasonable privacy and governments like it that way. They don’t need a warrant to buy info, just to force release. I don’t like google knowing everything about me. I hate the cops being a check away from it.