People, turn off automatic content download in your email clients. It immediately leaks when and from where you opened my email.
And Search suggestions in browser, when you type into address field.
Alternatives to Google Products
31–40 of 527 posts
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#32Recently I started shelling out $25 a month for a G-Suite account. I wish I could have kept my @gmail email address, as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well. Anyway, for privacy but also security it’s been amazing. DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and S/MIME for mail. All attachments are executed in a special sandbox before moving to your inbox (delays mail a little bit). None of my personal data / content…
I’m not sure what you mean, isn’t your experience using G Suite as a paid service?
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#33Anyone know of an alternative email client that sorts your mail intelligently into promotions, updates, forums, primary like Gmail does? That's had such a positive impact on my productivity I can't leave it behind (I've tried).
I use Gmail, but I deactivated that feature. It resulted in too many emails getting missed because they got categorized as promotions or updates.
Here is what I now do instead:
1. I archive all incoming email unless I still need to act on it. Ideally my inbox should always be empty.
2. I unsubscribe from all unwanted email like newsletters and most social network updates.
3. I learned gmail keyboard shortcuts to clear my inbox quickly.
4. I use filters for some mailing lists.
Since I started doing this I am much more on top of my emails. At least for me, most emails in those tabs was stuff I wasn't going to read anyway.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#34Recently I started shelling out $25 a month for a G-Suite account. I wish I could have kept my @gmail email address, as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well. Anyway, for privacy but also security it’s been amazing. DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and S/MIME for mail. All attachments are executed in a special sandbox before moving to your inbox (delays mail a little bit). None of my personal data / content…
> as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well.
I think it depends on how professional the personal URL is. If it is my_name@wazoo-how-is-it-going-lol.com, then I agree that it looks rather tacky. It it is first_name@last_name.com, then it looks more professional than a @gmail address.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that "privacy-focused" tends to be conflated with FLOSS. Rather, it's nearly impossible to guarantee privacy in proprietary software. The transparency of FLOSS makes it trustless. Want to know what data of yours, if any, is being collected? Look at the code. This is why, when it comes to privacy, Apple isn't worth consideration. All we have is their word, and that simply isn't enough.
This is true iff you look through the code yourself, or are willing to trust that others have done so in as thorough a manner as your use case (attack vectors) necessitate. Apple isn't worth consideration if you are willing to put in the effort, or delegate trust, to other systems. If you'd prefer to delegate trust to them, how is that effectively different that FOSS that you haven't examined?
Incentive.
When devs announce how their software handles privacy concerns, they have an incentive to be honest because all it takes is one discovery of conflicting code and their trust is lost. But if the code is closed source, that incentive for honesty is removed. Of course the media can still seek circumstantial evidence and make accusations, but that’s a far cry from version control.
Separately, closed source code invites new incentives to disrespect user privacy for profit.
So, there are these two major categories involved, both of which are mitigated by opening the source code.
Apple remains liable for both of them.
All that Apple has is an observation that they sell hardware too. I guess we are just assuming they already make enough money from advertising as it is and don’t really want more.
I think there is a significant difference.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#36One thing that I think would be helpful would be some editorial contextualizing how good these products are. A lot of people would like to incorporate privacy into their decision-making calculus, but not to the exclusion of the quality of the experience. In some of these categories, there are great alternatives. In some of these categories, the alternatives are not serious.
This comment intersects with nemothekid's great comment below which highlights how there are some major player alternatives which, while they aren't OSS and may have some privacy considerations, probably are still worth mentioning as an alternative to Google.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#37Recently I started shelling out $25 a month for a G-Suite account. I wish I could have kept my @gmail email address, as I think your own vanity URL looks a little tacky, but oh well. Anyway, for privacy but also security it’s been amazing. DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and S/MIME for mail. All attachments are executed in a special sandbox before moving to your inbox (delays mail a little bit). None of my personal data / content…
The last price I recall was $60/user/year (at the default level of storage space). Has the price increased that much, or does this reflect extra storage or other add-ons?
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#38What's wrong with data collection and tracking? Privacy seems extremely overrated here on HN. Am I missing something? Why would anyone take such efforts to avoid using Google products? That doesn't seem very rational...
I am more interested in the Google specific problems and tracing it back to Larry and Sergey. I have written an essay about one problem: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-moz...
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#39I'm a little discouraged when I see articles like this that seem to be completely tuned for developers or look over completely decent pro-privacy alternatives like Apple. For example, the "best" calendar alternative is Etar which looks to a Github repo. Really? At the very least you could mention Apple Calendar. Is Maps.Me (which uses AdSense) really better than Apple Maps? I'm not a fan of hooktube either - it just…
It's not that "privacy-focused" tends to be conflated with FLOSS. Rather, it's nearly impossible to guarantee privacy in proprietary software. The transparency of FLOSS makes it trustless. Want to know what data of yours, if any, is being collected? Look at the code. This is why, when it comes to privacy, Apple isn't worth consideration. All we have is their word, and that simply isn't enough.
Apple makes its money from expensive hardware. And respecting your privacy and security helps selling it a lot. And they earned trust by being serious about it for a long time.
Re: Alternatives to Google Products
#40Besides the Gmails alternatives:
1. Mailfence – Based in Belgium – 500 MB free; 20 GB Pro
2. Tutanota – Based in Germany – 1 GB free; 10 GB Pro
3. Mailbox.org – Based in Germany – 2 GB storage
4. Protonmail – Based in Switzerland – 500 MB free; 5 GB Pro
5. * * Runbox.com - Based in Norway * *
They forgot #5, runbox.com