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Ask HN: How to move away from Google

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Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#31

Post by yumraj »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #5

I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music. Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365. I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.

Curious why both Protonmail and Fastmail?

How would you rate the two if one were to use just one of those?

Any experience with Zoho, if so would love your thoughts on that too..

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#33

Post by uhtred »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #25

I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up t…

I know you said based in the EU and Fastmail are based in Australia I think, but they are great. Integrates easily with email, calendar, and contacts clients using imap/caldav/carddav.

What makes you consider google to be privacy conscious? Aren't they just scanning your emails 24/7 to profile you for advertising?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#35

Post by mjochim »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #25

I'm still looking for an alternative e-mail provider that is more privacy-conscious than Google, still works with ordinary IMAP and is based in the EU so I get to actually benefit from EU data protection. Haven't found one that ticks all boxes yet, but going with a US company doesn't appear to change much as I'm not a US citizen and hence fair game once my data is on US servers and I guess it inevitably will end up t…

Don't know which providers you have considered, but one that many around me use is posteo.de. Or gandi.net (based in France).

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#36

Post by keraf »

I moved away from Google a few years ago. I'm using the following alternatives:

- Email: ProtonMail

- Contacts, Calendar, Online storage: NextCloud hosted by Hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share)

- Phone: LineageOS (Android)

-- App stores: F-Droid for most apps and Aurora store for the occasional non F-Droid apps (like the ProtonMail client)

-- Maps: MagicEarth (not open source but privacy friendly and very featureful)

-- Messaging: Telegram FOSS

-- Contact & Calendar sync: DAVx

- Notes: Joplin (syncs with NextCloud and available on F-Droid as well)

- Search: DuckDuckGo

ProntonMail (with own domain) and the hosted NextCloud instance aren't free, but privacy comes with a price and I'm happy to pay for it. So far I'm very happy with the transition.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#37

Post by DoctorOW »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #5

I use gmail as my backup e-mail and Google drive as one of three cloud storage services. I pay for GCP and YouTube ad-free and YouTube Music. Great non-Google services I pay for are ProtonMail, Fastmail, iCloud, and Office-365. I have played around with self-hosting options, but decided to just use Cloud services, but don’t rely on any single vendor.

"Pay for" current tense? Why are you using that many email services?

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Google

#38

Post by hbn »

walrus01 wrote: post #23

> I want to eventually move away, especially gmail register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes take some basic security precautions on your domain registrar account, use a long complex password that's not used for any other service anywhere else on the internet, and set up some form of 2FA for logins as well. control your own authoritative DNS zonefile and choose where to set your MX r…

> register your own domain name, either for personal or professional purposes

I have a question about domains, for whoever might be able to answer. I've had my own domain for a few years, a .se domain (only because it's .se and my middle name ends in that, so I was able to make the whole thing read like my name but with a dot in it)

This is the Swedish TLD, which doesn't require you be a citizen to register. Is there any chance that the requirements for a TLD can change in the future and revoke my ability to own it? i.e. they start requiring you be a Swedish citizen to own a .se domain? Cause as it stands I just use the domain for my portfolio website which I could change whenever I want, but if I start tying my entire internet identity to that by registering it as my email everywhere, then it seems just as risky as using a gmail account that could get banned at any time.

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