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Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

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Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#91
This is about privacy and only privacy. However corporate interests in the US will interpret the EU banning Google Docs/Workspace and Office365 as protectionism and lobby for retaliatory protectionist measures against EU companies.

Which EU company will soon get a multi-billion dollar fine by the US government?

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#92
post #6

I've been thinking of ditching Gmail for myself and my business, but what true alternatives are there? I already have O365, but am not particular keen on using Exchange. I'm basically only using Gmail and Calendar. Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?

I asked myself the same question a while ago and wrote up the options then.[1] I used Runbox[2] for a while, but ended up switching to Soverin[3] and have been mostly happy with them. You certainly don’t get the spam filtering that the big companies have, but generally life is good.

[1] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/

[2] https://runbox.com/

[3] https://soverin.net/

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#93
post #20
post #2

Now let's ban MSFT Office365 too. It's of zero use to teach whatever to the kids.

Schools have no place supporting or teaching proprietary software in the first place. They should teach concepts using publicly available software and sponsor students who wish to patch bugs that impact school operations.

ca. 2000, my elementary school put me and my class in front of some PCs running windows 98 (proprietary), and connected to the internet, made us open internet explorer (proprietary), made us type "google.com" (proprietary) and showed us how to find things on the internet.

This was actually extremely unique - in france at the time, finding schools teaching any sort of computer skills, especially to young children, let alone *online*, was basically impossible. But I remember it very vividly. I don't know if the skills "learned" at that time had any influence on me, or ended up being useful (I probably would have figured them out eventually), but… I can't be sure, and the point is, it was I think a great thing.

I am an open source activist whenever I can. But saying schools have "no place supporting or teaching proprietary software" is extremely off-base, simply because the world is made of proprietary software and schools should be able to teach the reality of the world to children, teenagers and young adults.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#94
post #83

Along these lines -- would love to know what the marketplace for all of the data collected on students from the myriad of online-learning platforms schools rushed to implement over the past couple years while homeschooling replaced in-person education. Target the smartest kids, who may go to the best schools, and earn the highest salaries and buy the most stuff. You've got to figure there's a huge market of buyers fo…

I can imagine there is a large market for advertising to people who did bad in math.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#95

Sadly, too often data protection authorities just ban stuff before providing viable alternatives? I do understand there are issues with privacy shield or gpdr. For all those people suggesting OSS alternatives, it is difficult. Finding talent (yes, the govt jobs do not pay like private) to install, run, maintain suite of office-based is close to impossible. They tried at our school - as the board tried to ban Teams wh…

Denmark has alternatives, thats why this is done rather easily. The biggest problem is a slew of chromebooks bought by schools that will now be scraped, but the schools hated them anyway because of poor performance. Source Danish Guy with a daugther in 5th grade in Denmark.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#96
post #13
post #6

I've been thinking of ditching Gmail for myself and my business, but what true alternatives are there? I already have O365, but am not particular keen on using Exchange. I'm basically only using Gmail and Calendar. Any e-mail providers based out of the EU, worth mentioning?

Fastmail is good but more if you don't use it in bigger team (my opinion). Why don't you want to use exchange? Shouldn't be too bad as long as it's configured by MSFT?

Fastmail were US-only hosting, last time I looked.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#97
post #44
post #31

How concretely-grounded are these privacy concerns? I know we all love to hate Google, but my impression is they take the privacy of email extremely seriously at this point (eg, no longer using it for ads). Sure, I don't trust Google that much and I know others trust their brand even less, but is there hard evidence of misuse of Gmail user data?

It is an open secret if you talk to any Google employee that Gmail data is heavily used to enrich other Google services, including ad placement, even if indirectly. They also can and will give it to authorities thanks to bulk keyword sharing agreements with or without individual warrants. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/10/04/googl... US citizens should take careful note of the fact their data is onl…

That link doesn’t support your claim

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#99

About time - many schools in Denmark is now offering free Chromebooks to students. Wonder what they'll do with them now.

I think it’s time for those executives in public sector who approved the purchase of those laptops to “please explain” why they procured them without checking data sovereignty compliance first.

Re: Denmark bans Gmail and Co from schools due to privacy concerns

#100
post #67

Unless Denmark or the EU want to setup an actual competitor, there is no private alternative out there.

But there are, there's even a site categorising them: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/email-providers

But they didn't just ban GMail. The banned the entire Google Docs/Workspace portfolio.
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