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Alternatives to Google Products

restoreprivacy.com

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351–360 of 527 posts

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#351

Post by matthberg »

While the advice here is quite solid, when I went to figure out what their favicon was doing(it had partial transparency, apparently due to downscaling blending opaque and transparent parts), the first thing I saw was a big block of code that appeared to enable tracking by Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Linkedin. (It was a sharrre function with enableTracking set to true on each).

Not entirely relevant, yet considering the topic of the site it's a tad ironic, and a reminder of the prevalence of sites complicit in the tracking they advocate against.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#352

Post by pmlnr »

timwis wrote: post #3

Anyone 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).

"intelligently"

I only had trouble with Google's "intelligent" sorting; you're better off with a proper filter system, like sieve, and setting it up for yourself. Eg. I remember reservation confirmations going into "promotions".

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#353

Post by systoll »

majewsky wrote: post #260
systoll wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has an option to block all third party cookies in the manner similar to Safari 1-10's default behaviour. And like everything else, it lets you clear all cookies at once, or manually look through the cookies to clear them. It does not have a feature analogous to safari 11+'s tracking prevention.

What about the tracking prevention that Private Mode has had since FF 42 or so?

Firefox’s tracking protection is the same feature as Safari’s content blockers. [the defaults differ, though], and prevents specific listed domains from loading anything. Except when it turns out blocking them breaks too much. Like Youtube embeds.

Safari’s tracking prevention applies to things that do wind up getting loaded, and limits access to their own cookies/context. [kind of like loading all those embeds in seperate private sessions, even though they're on the same page]

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#354

Post by hargup »

omegote wrote: post #295

Funny how a website that announces alternatives to Google Products has a flash of unstyled content because it uses... Roboto as the main body font. Roboto is a typeface developed by Google...

Using a font developed by Google doesn't help Google track you. Protecting your privacy != doesn't mean rejecting absolutely everything by Google.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#355

Post by skate22 »

As much as i like OpenStreetMaps, i wouldn't really consider it a great alternative for google maps.

Consider making a small application to find the nearest cofee shop. OSM might have 10% of the POI coverage that Google has. And that 10% likely has some stale data.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#356

Post by teekert »

tome wrote: post #343
teekert wrote: post #211

I use Nextcloud (files, contacts, calendar, notes), Firefox on all the things and pay for email. My last "things" are the play store and Google maps, I can't seem to shake them (I love paying for good apps and gmaps is the best nav app imho).

Nextcloud looks great! Do they do individual subscriptions? Doesn't seem obvious to me. EDIT: Seems you have to go through a "provider" https://nextcloud.com/providers/ I will investigate further. EDIT2: OK, so you can can get a Nextcloud instance through one of these providers. Do you have a recommendation?

I run it on my server in the basement, but you could go for a Digital Ocean droplet, there used to be "one click" installs, but I'm not finding those anymore [0]. There are a lot of tutorials thought you could use. This is my referral link which will get you 10$ and me 25$ [1] (runs a 5$ droplet for 2 months with more than enough specs, if you need more space, that is also easily achieved at DO). Or use this link from Jupiter broadcasting (Linux Unplugged podcast) for a two months 100$ credit [2] (probably there are other codes to getting that 100$ referral discount, this is the one I know).

[0] https://www.digitalocean.com/products/one-click-apps/

[1]https://m.do.co/c/7461df2b7cb9

[2] https://do.co/unplugged

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#357

Post by icebraining »

50 wrote: post #301
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used Fastmail for years with a custom domain without a single problem. Amazingly great communications from the company too. Highly recommended but not free. (Less than $2/month though - so almost free.)

I’m doing this in the coming days — setting my custom domain with Fastmail. I’m planning on making that my main email and trying my best to unsubscribe from things on my Gmail account and move accounts over from Gmail to Fastmail until I think for certain I could delete my Google account entirely with no harm. Then again, I rarely have and like having subscriptions these days because of minimalism but I suppose this…

I generally don't trust GoDaddy, but I don't see how they could violate your privacy. From what I can tell, the worst they could do would be to log DNS queries. If you have a server with a static IP, you can always serve DNS yourself.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#358

Post by everdrive »

shawn wrote: post #238
chime wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a moderate resistFingerprinting setting? I don't mind my date/tz/language being known. There are 150m+ people living in my timezone who use en-US. I don't want my fonts, plugins, user agent, or detailed HW/graphics features (e.g. canvas/WebGL hash) being known. Those can uniquely identify me according to https://panopticlick.eff.org .

Those can uniquely identify me So does your resolution. And that's hard to mask because JS usually needs to know it. If you're not using the browser fullscreen, chances are that you're using a unique innerWidth+innerHeight. As unsatisfying as it is, the current best solution seems to be not to care about privacy most of the time, and then take privacy seriously when you do. Whonix is excellent for this.

Don't huge swaths of people have the same resolution, though? Yes, I understand other things come into play here (OS, Browser, available plugins, etc) but I am skeptical that people are really building UUIDs based on someone's screen resolution. Or, if they are, that such IDs are meaningfully accurate.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#359

Post by tehabe »

pygy_ wrote: post #270
bennofs wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAQ ( https://posteo.de/en/site/faq ) says the do it because a domain has personay identifying information in WHOIS and they would need to store it. I think for .de domains, you are required to have your personal address in WHOIS if you are not a company.

AFAIK the GDPR explicitly mandates registrar to hide personal information.

Yes. Since May 25, the whois for .de is limited to technical information like DNS server or DNS key.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#360

Post by icebraining »

dheera wrote: post #174
godzillabrennus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t found a replacement for Gmail yet. I’ve tried fastmail and ProtonMail but both have limitations. From a search engine perspective I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo and I’m impressed with how good it has gotten. With maps I’ve tried various solutions including mapquest, Microsoft, and Apple but nothing comes close to Google Maps.

I'm definitely on the hunt for a Gmail replacement, considering I have been hearing things such as a snapchat-esque disappearing emails, unprintable emails, and other similar stupid ideas. I decide what to do with emails and other data sent to me thank you.

Using another service won't help you; when someone uses those features, Gmail only sends an email with a link to see the actual message: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/rgmail1.pn...
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