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Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

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Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#5
> I’m trying to learn ways to minimize my reliance upon large companies for handling my day-to-day personal data.

Except that the moment you "share them across devices", at least one large company will silently grab your contacts anyway. And several others will try to, too, with one excuse or another.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#6

> I’m trying to learn ways to minimize my reliance upon large companies for handling my day-to-day personal data. Except that the moment you "share them across devices", at least one large company will silently grab your contacts anyway. And several others will try to, too, with one excuse or another.

Yes. And it's this that made me write my own zero-knowledge sync service. I encrypt my stuff on the client, sync it to a server using store-and-forward, and pull it down from other devices whenever they have an internet connection.

It's essentially file share for database records, and I remain surprised that something like this isn't in wide use already.

Docs haven't been updated in years, but here's a description of the thing back when I was focused on the client rather than the sync engine -

https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=a7aae391-9ac8-411...

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#8

> I’m trying to learn ways to minimize my reliance upon large companies for handling my day-to-day personal data. Except that the moment you "share them across devices", at least one large company will silently grab your contacts anyway. And several others will try to, too, with one excuse or another.

Why would anyone get your contacts if you sync them via your own CarDav server? You don't need to sync them to iCloud / Siri on iOS, and you can use non-Google Android phones.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#9

> I’m trying to learn ways to minimize my reliance upon large companies for handling my day-to-day personal data. Except that the moment you "share them across devices", at least one large company will silently grab your contacts anyway. And several others will try to, too, with one excuse or another.

To be fair, though, I read this as "I don't want a company closing down/sunsetting a service to end my ability to sync my data", not "I don't want companies to have my data".

So though you have a point, I don't think it goes against the post.

Re: Host your own contacts and calendars and share them across devices

#10
post #3

People looking for easier ways, Nextcloud/Owncloud already does this and you also get with file sync/backup/share for computer/smartphone and more as a bonus; all you need is just a LAMP server.

I am commenting to confirm that nextcloud works very very well.

I am running the official docker image with an apache2 frontend (http/https) and it pretty much works flawlessly.

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