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Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

degoogle.jmoore.dev

31–40 of 52 posts

Re: Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

#31
post #14

For anyone that has email on a custom domain, what do you use instead of Google Calendar? Nextcloud?

Fastmail has great calendar (CalDAV), contacts (whatever the open protocol for this is) support in addition to their e-mail. I migrated from Google Calendar & friends several years ago and have had no issues.

Another vote for this option being a viable, and dare I say good, one. In addition to the CalDAV, contacts and email you can use davx5[0] on Android to help with syncing to your (root-not-required) Android device.

This setup has worked well for me for a little under a year at this point.

[0]: https://www.davx5.com/

Re: Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

#33
post #11

When these things come up I always wonder, why do we believe what these services promise? For example, Duckduckgo is listed here and pretty much everywhere else as the best search engine for privacy, because they have a stated no-log policy. But there are no audits, and as far as I know we have no independent confirmation of this at all. I find it odd because when it comes to VPNs, there are independent audits and ot…

> why do we believe what these services promise?

We don't, but we also don't use DuckDuckGo's products as the recovery email for hundreds of online services, as a tool to share and store team spreadsheets or as a storage for all of our pictures, or as a tracker that monitors our location 24/7.

So the worst they could do is spy on our search, they can't track everything we do with the hanging threat of destroying our entire digital life if we do something that its IA deems unacceptable.

Re: Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

#34
post #11

When these things come up I always wonder, why do we believe what these services promise? For example, Duckduckgo is listed here and pretty much everywhere else as the best search engine for privacy, because they have a stated no-log policy. But there are no audits, and as far as I know we have no independent confirmation of this at all. I find it odd because when it comes to VPNs, there are independent audits and ot…

I don't "believe" any of them. My use of other services rather than staying on The Google reservation is because it's always better to not put all your eggs in one basket; The Google can clobber your entire digital life out of nowhere and with little to no recourse. Although you know for a fact that Google has all your data and records everything you do, at least there's a chance with other smaller services that they are either keeping their word or are out of the jurisdiction of your particular law enforcement agency.

At the end of the day, there's no absolute trust towards any of them. When I'm on the internet, I'm assuming that someone with enough motivation can eventually get my data. Instead of rolling over and submitting to The Google, I at least enjoy forcing my potential enemies to go through a more complicated obstacle course.

Re: Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

#37

Nice! We have made a Google Analytics alternative (getinsights.io) which is not linked there. Servers are still in the US unfortunately, although none of the data from the analytics is sent there. I'll create a PR to add it as an alternative if that's okay.

> Insights doesn't use any cookies, so there is no need to put a banner.

Doesn't sending requests from users PC to your 3rd party server require consent as it sends the IP address of the visitor?

Re: Degoogle: Alternatives to Google products, privacy tips, tricks, links

#40
post #11

When these things come up I always wonder, why do we believe what these services promise? For example, Duckduckgo is listed here and pretty much everywhere else as the best search engine for privacy, because they have a stated no-log policy. But there are no audits, and as far as I know we have no independent confirmation of this at all. I find it odd because when it comes to VPNs, there are independent audits and ot…

DDG says explicitly:

"We also save searches" in their https://duckduckgo.com/privacy policy

Some queries will always be "personally identifiable" such as your name, ssn, telephone number or an IP address lookup or an address or GPS coordinates, etc.

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