What are /r/degoogle's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I'm a fairly new degoogler, the same reason you wrote pushed me to the degoogle side. To watch 18+ yt videos, you can use invidious front-end sites. I use this link to find a working one: https://redirect.invidious.io/

The Swisscows privacy policy is very reasonable and data is anonymized within 7 days. They do not build profiles on individuals and access to their records requires going through the Swiss court system.

"We do not use cookies or any other tracking technologies, we do not create user profiles and we do not know who you are. The very limited and anonymous information that Swisscows collects is not resold. It is only necessary to provide the services."

https://swisscows.com/en/privacy

Personally I am a big fan and use them as my main search engine.

Yes, to deGoogle your phone you can't be using the stock -- deeply Googled -- OS. That said, please don't ever flash a Pixel with LineageOS. Please instead flash GrapheneOS. Lineage has immense security and privacy degradations. Graphene on the other hand offers the most private and arguably most secure mobile device on the market. I really can't encourage you enough to look into it. Not only for privacy and security, but also ease. Graphene offers a web installer that allows you to install the OS from start to finish by primarily just clicking a couple buttons in your browser. It's dead simple and near impossible to mess up so long as you follow the instructions.

I hope this helped, have an amazing rest of your day!

Without watching the video, total anonymity is very hard and probably not necessary.

Yes you can be tracked by your cell tower and your WiFi, but what's the point of a phone if you don't use the internet or cellular towers? Just get a GPD MicroPC

In my opinion, most people don't need to do this. If you're hiding from a specific ISP, just switch to a different one or use a VPN all the time (ProtonVPN is the only fully private free VPN, although it's slower). If you're hiding from the government, stay offline entirely. If you're hiding from corporations (in this case Google, though feel free to move your question to r/privacy for more general help), a degoogled Android is plenty. Avoid apps that ping google servers for ads, maps, or searching backends and you'll be fine. You can even install personal proxies (netguard) to drop any connections to google before it hits them. It'll completely shut down several things, but that's the point.

I'm not sure how far you are into trying to degoogle, but the place to start is F-Droid. I can't recommend Graphene or CalyxOS because I haven't used either one, but either way, you'll want to grab F-Droid because that is how you'll use your phone without being tracked.

CalyxOS has microg which replaces google play services. It comes with Aurora store and f droid. Aurora store is a front end for Google play store so it just downloads from there anonymously.

If you have a matrix.org account or server, there's a matrix <-> Steam bridge that can be used with any Matrix client (element, fluffychat...)

The only real non-Apple option you have is buying an Android phone that can be flashed with a rom that doesn’t have Google Play Services installed. Any apps that rely on google APIs will likely not work (microG exists, but is incomplete) as well as anything that checks for safetynet (banking apps, many media apps, some games).

If you're getting a non-chromium based browser it's almost certainly going to be based on Firefox.

If you're just looking for an alternative to Google's Chrome, default settings should be fine. If you're looking for enhanced privacy as well you'll probably want to do some modification. I think PrivacyTools.io has some pretty good advice as far as that goes.

Obviously do your own research as far as that goes, since what might be enough privacy for me might not be enough for you or vise-versa.

CryptPad!!!

https://cryptpad.fr/

It functions largely like Google Docs, you can collaborate, share, etc. Open source, client side encrypted, totally private, 1 GB free storage. Been using it for a while, works great.

GrapheneOS now as a sandboxed compatibility layer that let you install Play Services without giving them access to your phone. I don't know if it works well and I don't know if Android Auto works with it because I don't use it, but I've heard good stuff about it being better than MicroG and the like.

According to MicroG documentation, they do not support Android Auto

Using Waze and "getting permanently away from Google" isn't compatible, unfortunately. Yes, you have the convenience of getting live traffic updates because Google track every step you (and all other users) do. An alternative that works well, has live-traffic and is privacy-friendly is Magic Earth.

I understand that not everybody can deGoogle, but you said "get permanently away from Google"

excellent list

they didn't mention the microG project for Android (https://microg.org)

personally I don't miss any Google product for over 2 years now, only still using YouTube but I replaced the official app with YouTube Vanced (https://vanced.app) and NewPipe

Google is not passionate about most of their products anyway, they're just created to collect more data

There's another very interesting one, I don't understand why it's never mentioned: https://yacy.net/en/index.html

"Imagine if, rather than relying on the proprietary software of a large professional search engine operator, your search engine was run by many private computers which aren't under the control of any one company or individual. Well, that's what YaCy does!"

You can use any cloud by simply encrypting your data.But, there's always a chance that an unethical provider will block your account because they can't see what you're storing with them.

Check this: https://cryptomator.org/

NextDNS has not passed the DNSLeakTest even once. It shows real data every time. At the same time, Quad9 and Cisco OpenDNS are changing IP. This is my experience with NextDNS.

Open street map itself has directions and embedable maps

Directions - https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm_car&route=40.7309%2C-73.9872%3B27.7568%2C-81.4640#map=6/34.548/-77.837

And you can get embed stuff on the sharing menu on the right

https://auroraoss.com/faq/#aurora-store

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/

"Aurora Store - A Google Playstore Client"

"Aurora Store is an alternate to Google's Play Store, with an elegant design, using Aurora you can download apps, update existing apps, search for apps, get details about in-app trackers, spoof your location and much more. "

What other sources do you think that it accesses?

I guess grassroots organizing terrifies /r/degoogle?

It's like some of the folks here only want secure communication for the people that agree with them? Please try to take a step back from the Antifa moral panic and look at the work that Riseup's doing. They don't police their users, they ask them if they agree with their principles upon registration. You could easily use them for other purposes, not that I recommend it.

A lot of orgs in my neighborhood use Riseup services because they, like you, don't want to be subject to mass surveillance. They're pleasant people doing volunteer work that's useful to our community (and yes they are leftists who agree with Riseup's mission). They don't wear black and pick fights with white nationalists. They do mutual aid work and focus on addressing unmet needs surrounding them. Really scary, right? I would posit the majority of Riseup users probably don't do anything you'd find disagreeable. Think Food Not Bombs type of stuff.

Hell, the folks with Riseup volunteer their time & resources to keep this infrastructure alive and secure. I would love to see these services extended beyond the scope of Riseup's project, but they do have limited resources. Considering they're the ones that make that shit possible, I have no qualms with them setting boundaries as to what their services are used for. They won't host services for neo-nazis, you won't host services for Antifa, etc. There should be more collectives working with their model.

Their documentation on various security topics is top notch, and an excellent public resource if you care about secure communication. Especially if you want to learn to use encrypted email (with the GPG, Enignmail, Thunderbird stack).

So this happened to me as well. The issue was I enabled IPV6 in my router settings, and that IP was not obfuscated by the ExpressVPN client. I turned off IPV6 and the issue went away. Perhaps there something I could have done additionally, but that was the simplest resolution.

There's nextcloud which does a pretty good job with the drive part, AFAIK they also have an email and calendar app. You'd need to host it yourslef though, but there are hosted options available from for example hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud).

Nextcloud also has a mobile app which works pretty good.

The problem with GAB is that it's completely centralized. If GAB does something wrong, leaving means losing access to everything in the GAB network (all the people you like, etc.). I prefer Mastodon (or GNU social), because I can have an account @octodon.social, and follow, talk to, and interact with someone @degoogle.club. If octodon.social messes up, I can pack up and move to a different server without losing any of the people I followed.

No it doesn't anymore, its came along way with the recent updates. You can use google play services and framework without any security issues due to its sanboxing. https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services

GrapheneOS has support for installing the official releases of play services as sandboxed and unprivileged application. This approach, unlike microg, doesn't ruin the android security model and provides substantially more compatibility.

It seems you're more upset about Google charging a fee than you are about being a product. You should switch those priorities and denounce all big tech including Apple. Or does Apple need to charge you a fee in order for you to rant about that too and want to switch? Have you even turned off your Apple advertising ID?

I'll leave these resources for you, but I don't think you really care and you just wanted to complain about Google charging you:

r/privacytoolsIO

https://prism-break.org

Follow the above if you truly don't want to be a product. Remember none of these companies care about you and you're just data to sell, even to Apple. Oh, and try ProtonMail, they're about to have an import feature where you can import your old inbox.

Gotta be that guy and plug LibreOffice.

Unless you've got some weird edge-case automation or some somesuch coded to specific MSO macros, it does everything MSO will and doesn't require that you be online.

Calyx OS, I've been using it for a while and its great. Easy install and it has MicroG so notifications still work. You could also use Graphene OS but I didn't find it very user friendly.

You went to Authy? That was my mistake too (finally requested account deletion yesterday). Read their privacy policy again.

I suggest Aegis, if you don't like the UI of andOTP/freeOTP, but make sure to export a backup and save it somewhere.

Still requires phone number to sign up. For no reason, could use any contact details, email, Matrix, qTox, even none like Session, email and Matrix and become a root identity provider.

Ah, I'm not familiar with editing on Android. You might check alternativeto.net to try some apps out. I check this place whenever I'm looking to try new apps

Because it's an insecure device that doesn't receive security updates since 2019: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705#when_updates&zippy=%2Cpixel-phones
https://grapheneos.org/faq#legacy-devices explains why it's not supported anymore (they used to).

Thanks for sharing!

Consider AndOTP over Authy. Open source, great features, and puts you in total control of your secrets backup.

Importantly for me (after having my phone stolen some months ago) it also lacks Authy's cloud-based recovery feature, which could potentially be exploited by an attacker. I personally used it to recover on my new phone and, well, let's just say it was a little too easy and convenient for my liking.

Tomtom has a really good app with "navigation, offline maps, traffic & speed camera alerts". Tomtom has also promises never to sell user data, so it's a great option for those looking to degoogle!

On my plan of de-google I searched for services that substitute the gsuite. Like drive, documents, youtube... There are webs like https://alternativeto.net/ where you can find alternative and encrypted services.

I too would like to see alternatives to YouTube, but until then, if you must use Youtube...

For Windows/Linux/Max PC's use FreeTube

For Android use NewPipe

There's an alternative to Firefox I've found: it's called LibreWolf. It hardens Firefox, as well as it removes Google SafeBrowsing and Pocket by default. It also sets DuckDuckGo by default, adds a Searx instance, etc.

You can find more changes/additions here: https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/docs/

I know exactly what you mean. But that's the reason we should use alternatives. And there is actually something that you can do about it. There is an app called "Street Complete" that lets you add data to the OSM maps in a very easy and in a gamification way.

Available on Playstore or F-Droid

With this you can help make OSM more accessible and useful.

Based on some research https://www.opennic.org is my go to dns for privacy/anti-censorship. But its nice to have an non-google alternative anyway, whether its of questionable privacy wise, or not. (cloudflare)

A project I recently found that should fit your needs is EteSync. Haven't tested it myselfe but it looks pretty solid to me. I personally use Nextcloud right now, but it's a lot more than just a sync service for contacts and calendars.

I would point out though that any VPN that requires you to enter an Email is less private (Proton) than one that does not require it. Such as Mullvad. Depending on your threat model you might want to consider this. See Techlores VPN chart, although I personally would go as far as advise against running all your traffic through a 3rd party's network all the time, every day.

How do you guys like ProtonVPN? I've been on the trial this week and have been redirecting my phone and browser traffic through it and it seems alright. I'm thinking of grabbing a basic subscription to their services after it expires. After seeing AWS nuke an entire company over some unsubstantiated allegations I've been leery that my ISP might some day be under pressure to nuke individual users themselves.

https://alternativeto.net/software/shazam/

Some recommended ACRCloud in the past.

I did not use it personally, so I can't recommend or caution against.

I am personally using GrapheneOS, and they now have support for sandboxed play services, but I am a bit intense and I completely deGoogled and avoid all big tech so I have no need for MicroG / PlayServices. The only apps installed on my phone are opensource and sourced directly from F-Droid (or third-party repositories).

I am certainly not an expert, but if you have any question, feel free to ask me in PM

1 - Delete MicroG. 2 - Install Vanced Manager. 3 - Open Vanced Manager. 4 - Press MicroG and install the latest update. 5 - Press YouTube Vanced and install the version you want. 6 - Open YouTube Vanced and login. 7 - Done!

And what about the app "Magic Earth"? It routes you via OSM and has voice instructions as well. And it also gives you options to choose.

https://www.magicearth.com

It is in the Playstore and not in F-Droid.

But you can download it via "Aurora Store" (F-Droid Repository) from there.

OpenGApps is not "the open source bit of Play Services". They are the regular GApps for systems which come not pre-bundled with GApps, such as LineageOS. On a system you want to keep free of Google, you never never never want to install them.

What you might looking for is called microG: https://microg.org/

I've been thinking this same thing forever! The classical keyword query has been devastated by predictive crap. I hate how syntax operators don't work even in DuckDuckGo's image search…sigh

I've used YaCy, though you will need to install software on your computer.

Great. Be sure to check out its Anonymous View feature. This lets you stay anonymous when you visit links you find through Startpage. Helps prevent malware and fingerprinting since Startpage.com fetches the pages for you and obfuscates your user agent info.

Here's my advice: don't get rid of Gmail/Google yet.

Wait, don't leave! Let me explain: if you set up a custom domain and pay $6/month for Google Workspace you've already covered the first 80%. You can move your email somewhere else and Google won't snoop on your data (many Fortune 500 companies use Workspace/GSuite, their policy is clear, they don't use Workspace data for advertisement).

But let's say you don't trust Google one bit. You can use encrypted email for sensitive communication and set up IMAP and Cal/CardDAV clients on all your devices (and even on a server you own) so that in the worst case you have a full backup of your email, contacts and calendar.

What about files, notes and stuff? I personally use a combo of Drive + Joplin (an open source note taking app with E2EE, similar to Evernote). Everything I have is available at all times on at least 2 devices + Drive itself. There are even tools like InSync that convert GDocs files into Open/MS Office formats automatically for complete offline access.

The advantages are clear: you still own your data (and encrypt what you really want to keep secret) and you still use the undeniably amazing Google products. At the same time you are free to browse for alternatives if you really want a hardcore anti-Google solution.

And if you have Apple devices you can easily set this up to be multicloud. Have a copy of everything on both iCloud and Drive (with Joplin allowing you to still encrypt things end2end).

Just my 2 cents.

They are doing a crowdfunding (link here).

More about PeerTube (link here).

Since you didn't specify what is lacking it's really hard to know what you want.

I'll just recommend Bromite for Android and Firefox for Desktop. Firefox needs to be configured a bit to do exactly what I want, but it's possible.

> explain how does chromium work privacywise?

Poorly without extensive patching, and even then there's always a risk of privacy invasion due to patches being out of date.

I use JottaCloud personally. Cryptee would be my first choice for security and privacy, but it lacks certain features. Jotta hits a good middle ground for me, and while it doesn't have end-to-end encryption, they do offer a privacy guarantee

Install AFWall+, gerate a script to block all (known) google addresses and use that script in AFWall+.

AFWall+

afwall_easy

But hey there exists a distraction-free mirror of the article. I think someone in /r/privacy was nice enough to do that.

That is what I ended up doing (latest).

I also have another host that I am transitioning off of. Hosting my own domain radically reduced spam because I can create an alias for every company I work with, so if they start getting obnoxious, I kill the alias. I know exactly who is leaking my info.

It is also nice to have [email protected] so you have throwaways to use so you don't have to login every time you might try something. You can almost always change the account to [email protected] if you keep using them.

ProtonVPN and Mail (Visionary) was like $288 for two years I think. I've been mostly happy with both. VPN sometimes is slow to reconnect or hangs especially when waking from sleep.

Now if I could only bypass reCaptcha for the handful of dickheads that mandate it I'd feel like in a much better place.

Don't remove apps that you don't know how it functions. Check it on the web and read about it. There are guides where they list out which apps are bloatware and you can safely remove them.

Highly recommend you to download tracker control from Fdroid.

Do check out https://alternativeto.net/ to find alternatives.

Since you're new in this, it would be better to read articles on how to degoogle.

Slowly but gradually you will get the hang of it.

No it does not. But you can go with https://lineage.microg.org/ for that setup though. They also explain partly why LineageOS doesn't use microg, as does LineageOS themselves somewhere on their site.

LineageOS only supports using OpenGapps or MjndTheGapps which are actual Google framework, but you can choose to install only the minimal amount.. But it's not as privacy friendly like microg.

Can't say I've ever heard of Graphene, I'm running LineageOS for MicroG, a slight fork from LineageOS, which has a wide variety of supported phones.

I was running plain Lineage with Gapps, but wanted to degoogle, and I've not had any issues so far.

Is there any "good" alternative to Google Photos? I find it the most difficult to replace.

1. DuckDuckGo
2. email (protonmail perhaps?), docs and calendar (I don't know)
3. Firefox or Brave
4. Check this project: /e/ https://e.foundation/ (based on lineage OS). No need to change from Android.
5. Big question for me.
6. Spotify :P

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Potential google translate replacement.

For those who are familiar with python, if you have Linux or Mac OS, it runs locally as a Flask app.

On Windows, the author recommends running it though docker.

Looks promising from my initial test on Linux. There is a demo instance running online here.

https://libretranslate.com/

The great thing about StartPage is that every search is instanced without changing the url. Even with DuckDuckGo, every search you make is registered in your history as "duckduckgo.com/embarrasing_search_about_dildos" whereas a similar search in StartPage would simply show up as "https://www.startpage.com/do/search" regardless of what you search for.

Hey has a similar concept. There is The Feed that I use for newsletters and promotional items and Paper Trail that can be used for receipts or notifications and such. You will have to opt them in first and designate to The Feed, for example - it’s not automatic. But that’s per their philosophy to not let machine decide for you. Also product is not free.

Armored.net is by Epik which are known for their rock solid stance on privacy and free speech. They are the registrars for Gab.com, InfoWars (Alex Jones), etc. Despite what you think of them, the fact that Epik works with them on principal of Free Speech, safe bet they take privacy seriously as well.

This is a great tool to have openstreetmap at hands.

I've been using the floss version osmand~ you can find on f-droid that does not have the limitation on the number of maps you can download: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/

Using microG requires having signature spoofing support, which lets apps bypass signature verification. With this in place there is no way for you to know that an app is actually what it say it is. I'd highly recommend using a pixel phone with Graphene and without microG. If you really need Play Services you can now install the sandboxed version on Graphene (https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services). I'm using my banking apps on Graphene without play services or microG so this might work as well for you.

Nope they do not collect data. In fact everything is happening locally so they do not have your data ;)

source ; https://brave.com/brave-ads-launch/

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Plus it is opt-in, you won't see any ads if you don't choose to see them. And since it's open-sourced, I trust them

https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/

You could selfhost a nextcloud instance or find some hosting which will work for you.

A bonus is, that you also get a deggogled drive too...

If you're technical, you can host a Nextcloud on a cheap server and it'd replace both contacts and calendar (through CardDAV and CalDAV) as well as act as a Drive / Dropbox replacement. If you're not technical, it's cheaper and more efficient to see if you can get an account on a hosted instance from a provider.

On the phone side of things, I use DAVx5 to connect to my Nextcloud server

EDIT: worth saying that this is my solution on my de-googled phone!

Nextcloud, lots of providers out there since you don't want to self host.

https://nextcloud.com/signup/

If you click "Change Providers" on that page, you'll see a bigger list of them, as well as the apps that each provider gives you.

Tab.digital and Webo.hosting provide Collabora which is essentially like google docs, so that might be the best choice.

> https://osmand.net/

I have been using this for 6 years now and subscribe to it as well for latest updated but its not even close to Google Maps. Being said that its definitely in second position and all others are crap.

From what I can tell this is exactly like MicroG build of Lineage. The MicroG build has a reverse engineering of the messenger api and the maps api so programs that look for Google's tools can operate without Google.

It also has the F-Droid store as a system app. I've been running it for a few months now and it's really slick.

The only complaint I have about /e/ OS is no support (yet) for contactless payment apps, but that's not a deal-breaker for me. I've had my e.Foundation S9 for about a week now, and I love it. Just waiting on a case to arrive.

To your feature requirements:

• Camera is EXCELLENT
• MicroSD goes into the same tray as the SIM
• Headphone jack is present
• Exynos 9810 chipset seems to hold up well enough.
• IP68 certified

I was wary of buying a refurbished phone, but it arrived in 3 days and looked pretty much new. Fair warning, mine did only ship with /e/ OS 8.1.0 (Oreo). To get it to "Q", I had to flash it with a stock Samsung/Android 10 firmware for the German unlocked (DBT) SM-G960F, *THEN* flash over using the /e/ OS Q dev and recovery images. Whole process took about 15 minutes on my Pop!_OS (Ubuntu) equipped Thinkpad using "heimdall" and a Type-C cable.

Good luck!

Are you joking on this? The joke is really far fetched :D

If you'd use brave search, youd have this.

OP was looking for https://search.brave.com/search?q=opinion+poll+american+heroes+edison&source=web and not what

But it's still brave, be aware of what they do.

Just make an acct at either 33mail or anonaddy and it's self explanatory. You set your target email address and if your 33mail or anonaddy name is ohthatsharm, you would send an email from say asshole warehouse to , then all those emails would just show up in your target inbox. You make them up on the spot, if you started getting emails at that address from anybody other than asshole warehouse you know that's who sold you out. Then if wanted you can just pause or delete that forwarder.

https://anonaddy.com/

https://33mail.com/

I don't feel like brave is a good browser. I refuse to use it purely due to the fact that it's closed source (I haven't looked into it besides that since open source is a requirement for all my daily drivers). Now with that being said (so you don't think I'm as you describe) I do feel like Firefox should not be trusted given a history of issues (recently found this video, it's a pretty good roundup of issues: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY ). Are they open source? Yes, it means we can modify their browser and remove components like widevine, shield, pocket, ect. I'd rather support a foundation that wants the internet to go where I want the internet to go though. Currently I'm working on switching to GNU IceCat (it's a Firefox fork that removes a lot of things I dislike and is supported by the GNU foundation, I just have to wait for it to build: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ ). On Android I use fennecdroid from the fdroid repo (and I'm working on switching to full lineageOS, but there's some hangups with work and proprietary 2 factor authentication (I can get a physical key, but management isn't really in for the holidays)) So, as you've said, since it's open source, we can tweak it and that's exactly where I feel people should; supporting the tweakers (drug pun not intended) until Mozilla can get their management in line OR fall apart as a company.

Little bit of background

I install tracker-control a few days ago and I have been monitoring recently. I noticed that a lot of the stock android apps are making requests to Google, AWS and Samsung. Is this of concern, are these apps sending personal data? If they are, should I disable their internet access?

Example: I saw a system app called BrightnessBNR sending requests to Samsung, Google and AWS. Why would it being doing that? It seems like all the app does it control the brightness?

Here is a video of me scrolling through the apps (it gives more detail): https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/26823b96-d217-4c6c-ac1d-ab5cee448911

I've heard czkawka is pretty good for this sort of thing. It should be able to match duplicates of different sizes, resolutions, etc. Here is a video that goes into it more.

You can host your Matomo at https://matomo.org/download/ and host it yourself at Vultr/DigitalOcean for like $5 or on your own server at home if that is your thing.

I agree your dashboard looks great. But I am about hosting my own site analytics.

I'm guessing you mean getsession.org and not .com.

The implementation looks solid. The issue is, that it is build on the Loki network. While the technical implementation of it is impressive, It's main developer pitched it first to infinite-chan. Personally that is a reason why I don't support it, but nontheless the technical implementation of the loki network is impressive. https://nitter.net/WPalant/status/1281540005190672384

For a calendar app, your best options are Etar and simple calendar that you can find on f-droid. then you would need an app to sync with a cloud provider. for that there is davx5 on f-droid and you can choose any provider from their list https://www.davx5.com/tested-with/

If it's only about mail, calender and contact check out mailbox.org. It's not free, but I believe 1 euro per month is affordable. Very secure, no ads, anonymous, hosted in Europe (Germany) and powered 100% by renewables if you care.

Depending on how much storage you need and accessibility, check out creating your own next cloud instance (sort've complicated) or https://crypt.ee by fellow redditor johnozbay.

Cryptee is an encrypted cloud storage for photos and documents with a fantastic privacy policy and quite privacy centric. This option is easy to use and fairly straight forward, although you may not have the quick access to your photos like you did with google photos. I know johnozbay is always developing / coding for cryptee so I'm sure he's got quite the roadmap planned.

Nextcloud / Owncloud you can self host on a server, VM, raspberry pi, a VPS or purchase a nextcloud instance from an online provider. You can easily integrate files editing with collabora and photos has a built-in application. (Nextcloud requires more work/setup). You can also set up nextcloud to auto upload your phone contacts, calendar events, and photos from your phone to your nextcloud instance.

https://nextcloud.com/federation/ < their blurb page about it, contains links to both the user and administrative manuals

Nextcloud federation will let you create remote access links to files and dirs in your nextcloud instance, and let the remote user have them available in their nextcloud shares view until you revoke access (I believe there's revoke timers available as well)

I am not 100% sure on this, but my understanding is that having memcache configured will cache those objects that are frequently accessed, and sync them in the background.

Yes!

I love hearing this. I can help you get the rest of the way too. I know there will be a time where you want to have some sort of Google service you miss. You can get a lot of it back with NextCloud. If you have a computer or two laying around, you can setup your own cloud services computer. The software is open source and vetted by programmers around the world. I use it to sync my contacts, calendar, have a Google drive like file server, and if you have a second computer, you can get another open source software OnlyOffice for documents.

Take a look https://nextcloud.com/

Well there is some adjustment you need to have, however it is definitely doable. For example, move your messaging communication to Signal. It works very well and is very similar to functionality to WhatsApp so your friends and family can easily migrate there. For cloud storage use an encrypted cloud such as Tresorit or pcloud. You can easily share files from there just like Dropbox or Google drive.

Email encryption is a bit more disruptive for your friends. Use an encrypted email such as ProtonVPN or Tutanota. However when emailing others, you need to encrypt the message where the recipient will need to enter a password to open the contents.
What I do I share a password ahead of time, and use the same password with the same person.

Using a password manager like Bitwarden is very simple and helps you organize and secure your passwords

There are free versions of all of these tools for you to try out.

Last but not least, use a good vpn service such as ProtonVPN, PIA vpn or Mullvad.

Android app hosted in Gplay(Aurora/Yalp) stores and luckily F-Droid

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.shadowice.flocke.andotp

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.shadowice.flocke.andotp/

>I might take the update and do it again.

Let's hope the app doesn't update too often or it is going to be a real chore :)

Nobody can call you a dumbass for not knowing how to do it since 99% of all humans have no idea what code is, let alone decompiling.

As I said, just use Blokada to block the trackers that are in the app or look for an alternative (you can use alternativeto.net).

why are we using domains.google anyway? I mean for me its just the mail forwarding; has anyone found a better mail forwarding service as part of a domain purchase? All the ones I have found lag way too much.

OP what about VISA's privacy.com? (my referral link gives us both $5 https://privacy.com/join/PAC2D)

You can have as main, and then as one alias, you can have a couple of those within the same account, read more about this here: https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/secure-email-alias/

yes/no, some features are behind paywall (see: https://bitwarden.com/pricing)
Most people dont need the features that are. However, some extremely security concious people, who worry about things like 2fa and hardware keys, do however.

I keep a server personally on a private vlan for managing all my servers, inaccessible to anyone except those on the Vlan and unroutable otherwise. Why? its the ultimate level of security. Yes there is backups, but those backups are completely unusable unless it fails.

I’m having success by actively inviting people to signal, and telling them why it’s important to me. Let me get the copy/pasta I made for group chats... I’m having trouble quoting on mobile, so it’s everything after this paragraph:

Hey friends, given WhatsApp’s changing terms of service it’s no longer much better than Facebook messenger. How would people feel about using something like signal?

It’s the most secure messaging platform that exists, end to end encrypted and you can verify each other so that man in the middle attacks are impossible. The software is open source which is hippy speak for the code being publicly available/auditable, something that is vital for proving the security of a software platform.

It’s free, and even Elon musk recommends it specifically (seriously lol)

Here’s the signal website. You can download the app on iOS/android/windows/Mac/Linux https://signal.org/en/

This is a very important thing to do (in my opinion) - reducing the power of social media giants like Facebook will benefit us all in reducing the chasm that exists within western politics.

Unfortunately it’s something that’s incredibly difficult to achieve due to the “network” effect of social platforms (who else still has a Facebook account because all their friends do?)

It is for this reason I’m asking you all here; as people that I care deeply about and interact with it’s impossible for me to make a stand like this without you all

I’m using Recall which is developed on Blockstack. The only issue is batch uploading on mobile.

The app only lets you upload one photo at a time which is a PITA.

Nope, it is not. From https://grapheneos.org/history/ :
>[...] In late 2015, a company was incorporated which became the primary sponsor of the project. GrapheneOS was previously known as CopperheadOS while it was sponsored by this company.

> [...] In 2018, the company was hijacked by the CEO who attempted to take over the project through coercion, but they were rebuked. They seized the infrastructure and stole the donations, but the project successfully moved on without them and has been fully revived. Since then, they've taken to fraudulently claiming ownership and authorship of our work, which has no basis in fact.
[...] After splitting from the former sponsor, the project was rebranded to AndroidHardening and then to GrapheneOS and it has continued down the original path of being an independent open source project. It will never again be closely tied to any particular sponsor or company.

When I switched to GrapheneOS I decided to go for the cheapest pixel model available with the longest support left, which in my case is the Pixel 4a (299 EUR and more than 2 years support left)

here the suggestion from the official graphene os website: https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices

The camera included is upstream AOSP.
Open Camera with has camera2 api for advanced features on non-A pixel models.
Please read https://grapheneos.org/usage#camera

The OS has already provided access to one the of best camera apps (GCAm) without any connection to google. That's what the sandboxed play services is.
Please reread the usage page and the FAQ.

1) a good idea would be isolate WhatsApp in a secondary profile. Application can't comunicate bewteen profile.

2) wdym with local privacy?

3) no problem with that.

4) Yes, if you deny a permission e.g camera then an application won't access your camera. Note that on Graphene you can also disable Sensor & internet per application.

5) Vanadium is recommended. Is the default browser on GrapheneOS.

6) yes, is a good idea.

7) just install from aurora store. Keep in mind that you'll need to install the sandboxed and unprivileged play services. Otherwise google camera won't work https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-play-services

8) use reddit as a web application on Vanadium. Possibly on Jitless mode to drastically reduce attack surface

Hi u/-Carius-

The Google Pixel 5 launched on September 30, 2020. The initial stable branch release of GrapheneOS for the Pixel 5 was on February 06, 2021.

Pixel 5's End of Life date is October 31, 2023, giving you 2 years and 4 months of usage.

That would be a good choice. Personally, I would go for the 4a 5g. Priced less and EOL is 1 month longer.

As far as the Pixel 6 goes,.. "this fall, with their own processor called „Whitechalp“" and your following question(2)...

The GrapheneOS project does not comment on speculations and unreliable leaks.

If you have any questions or concerns you're welcome to ask us directly in our matrix community rooms.

More info -> https://grapheneos.org/contact#community

I recommend O&amp;O Shutup - it shows toggles for many windows settings and services that do telemetry and the like. I just select the recommended settings.

Also Windows 10 debloater but be careful with this one. It removes OEM programs, candy crush, etc. and has options for deleting windows programs like the windows store (not that I recommend removing windows store)

Tasks.org dev here - you can visit nextcloud.com/signup to find free Nextcloud providers, or use DecSync CC + Syncthing for file-based synchronization. If you have any questions or run into any trouble head over to r/tasks or PM me!

Give Fastmail a try. They offer contacts, calendar, and you can BYOD (bring your own domain). Their app is pretty good since you can access your email, contacts, and calendar all at once.

I use the wonderful Mail-in-a-Box to host my own email on a VPS, but you mentioned you don't want to self-host. On my Google-less Android device I use K-9 Mail, Etar, and DAVdroid. The standard contacts app on my phone picks up my contacts via DAVdroid.

I am using a managed server from Hetzner.

They also offer a Nextcloud storage solution: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share

I can definitely recommend them. I am a customer since over 10 years and I never had any issues that could not be solved by their excellent service