Personally, I created a chrome extension for myself where I track my own behavior locally and recommend myself content from sites i like (youtube/twitter/quora/etc) in a feed. Would rather have control over my own algorithm and own the data. Also it gives me flexibility. Turns out I do like these feeds just not when I don't own it haha.
Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
31–40 of 168 posts
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#32When I started "deGoogling" myself a year ago, the first step was to stop using Gmail. When changing my registered e-mail address everywhere on the Internet there was one crucial bit that I completely overlooked: the owner/tech/billing/etc. contact records of a domain that I own. Many registrars send all regular communications to the e-mail address of the user account , not to those in the domain contact records, so…
I‘m not sure what you think would have happened. The domain is still registered via the register to your account and they literally know those contact emails become out of date. Those fields are pretty much just for informational purposes otherwise Whois privacy would own all the domains.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#33When I started "deGoogling" myself a year ago, the first step was to stop using Gmail. When changing my registered e-mail address everywhere on the Internet there was one crucial bit that I completely overlooked: the owner/tech/billing/etc. contact records of a domain that I own. Many registrars send all regular communications to the e-mail address of the user account , not to those in the domain contact records, so…
If you could still login to the Registrars user account that owned the domain and that email address had been changed I suspect you should still be able to change the domain contact information via the self service console. Worst case you'd raise a ticket (how good is actual support!) and they would be able to change the domain contact information for you because you can already authenticate with the user account tha…
Maybe it's not the case for all TLDs and registrars, but for my .se domain and my specific registrar, changing any of the contact records required a confirmation sent to the e-mail address of the owner record. A logical safety measure to prevent theft.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#34Personally, I created a chrome extension for myself where I track my own behavior locally and recommend myself content from sites i like (youtube/twitter/quora/etc) in a feed. Would rather have control over my own algorithm and own the data. Also it gives me flexibility. Turns out I do like these feeds just not when I don't own it haha.
lmk if you're interested in the tech behind it. It's for my personal use now but could also release it if people are interested. I call it myAlgorithm.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#35The only trace left from Google in my life is search. No, DDG is unfortunately nowhere near Google Search.
The day I could replace that too, I'll try my best not to touch a Google product ever again.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#36When I started "deGoogling" myself a year ago, the first step was to stop using Gmail. When changing my registered e-mail address everywhere on the Internet there was one crucial bit that I completely overlooked: the owner/tech/billing/etc. contact records of a domain that I own. Many registrars send all regular communications to the e-mail address of the user account , not to those in the domain contact records, so…
I‘m not sure what you think would have happened. The domain is still registered via the register to your account and they literally know those contact emails become out of date. Those fields are pretty much just for informational purposes otherwise Whois privacy would own all the domains.
Changing contact records required confirmation sent to the e-mail address of the owner record. Ultimately, in case of domain theft/dispute or similar, the domain's owner record has highest authority.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#37The only trace left from Google in my life is search. No, DDG is unfortunately nowhere near Google Search. The day I could replace that too, I'll try my best not to touch a Google product ever again.
I'm not saying it will fully replace google, but I find startpage.com to be much better than DDG, and I am leaning back on google search less and less
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#38Glad to see de-googling picking up steam. Personally, I created a Google Keep clone PWA[1] to address what I was missing after cutting the google tumor out of my life. I hope to see more and more passion projects which respect privacy and are of equal utility to what google provides.
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#39I went with a pretty straightforward approach at the time. I mostly de-Googled myself 3-4 years ago.
I use Fastmail for email and calendar, DuckDuckGo & StartPage for searching, Firefox as a web browser, and a Synology NAS for storage over Google Drive.
I use Google Drive / Docs / Sheets occasionally for collaborating. Most people aren't de-Googled so it's more of a hassle to ask them to use a different service. Additionally, I don't use Google services for anything particularly important so I don't mind if Google knows about it.
Fastmail isn't the most private service out there, but it is an amazing service to use for email, calendar, contacts, file storage, and notes. It works with 1Password with masked emails [0].
You can also use sieve [1] to fine tune your filter rules. I'm not aware of other email services that provide this (unless of course you are hosting your own).
I've played with it a bit. You don't really need to do it because the interface they have can generate sieve code for you, but it's nice that it is an option.
[0]: https://www.fastmail.com/1password/ [1]: http://sieve.info/
Re: Ask HN: How have you deGoogled your life?
#40Here are some of my additional recommendations: Analytics - GoatCounter, Counter.dev Keyboard - Unexpected Keyboard (A very cool keyboard) Search - Neeva Translate - Lingva Some notes on the post: - Protonmail as a company doesn’t have a very stellar reputation. I recommend hosting an e-mail server by yourself, or just use providers like Disroot Mail - K9 Mail is an email client, not an email provider
Few more additions:
• Google Chrome
— Firefox - Safari - Vivaldi
• Google Chrome Passwords
— BitWarden - 1Password - KeePass - Enpass
• Google Authenticator
— Authy - 1Password - AndOTP - Aegis - Enpass
• Google Translate
— Deepl - WordReference - Lingva - bab.la
• Google Maps
— Dark Sky - Weather Underground - OsmAnd - Guru Maps
• WeTransfer
— Internxt Send - filetransfer.kpn.com