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Alternatives to Google Products

restoreprivacy.com

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Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#41

Post by astronautjones »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #9
lev99 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was strange bing was not mentioned, even though it has Mozilla's endorsement of having a better privacy policy than Google[0] and is probably the most popular alternative to search in the United States. This far from a complete list of Google alternatives. [0] https://www.pcworld.com/article/184520/mozilla_endorses_bing...

As much as I like Microsoft, Bing is awful. Ive used it, and I tried to like it. It can't find anything.

Bing's video search (particularly for porn) is the best in the business.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#42

Post by auslander »

theamk wrote: post #11
nemothekid wrote: post #2

I'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…

I don't see that in the article. Search, email, drive, youtube, maps all have many non-FOSS entries. I am fairly sure that no apple product is mentioned because replacing all the hardware one has just for more privacy is likely too extreme for many. Not to mention that one of the biggest things you can do for your privacy is ad-blocking / cookie cleaning, and apple does not make it easier at all.

> biggest things you can do for your privacy is ad-blocking / cookie cleaning

Very true. But there is no problem with apple, in fact Safari is first browser that is clearing cookies - ITP(2). I use uBlock Origin on Safari and Private browsing - no cookies at all.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#43

Post by bartread »

cosmojg wrote: post #17
nemothekid wrote: post #2

I'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.

> Want to know what data of yours, if any, is being collected? Look at the code.

I find this to be an extremely un-compelling position. A relatively small proportion of the general population has the skills to meaningfully look at the code, never mind the time. Moreover, even for someone who is capable, such an exercise quickly becomes non-trivial on an unfamiliar codebase for an app of any complexity.

In many cases there's also no guarantee that the code you're reading is the code that's running.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#44

Post by cosmojg »

citrablue wrote: post #20
cosmojg wrote: post #17

Earlier 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?

Let's consider the incentives in each case and how they enable you to distribute your trust. Apple is a for-profit, publicly traded corporation. Their purpose is to make money, and they will likely do whatever they can to achieve that. More importantly, only they can see their code, not you and not other users. All you can possibly have is their word, and they will say whatever it takes to sell you their product. If they lie or exaggerate, there's no way you or anyone else could know.

On the other hand, open source projects come in all shapes and sizes. Generally, they have a strong community of both developers and users around them. If you don't feel like looking at the code, you don't even have to trust the project itself. You can look to the community and its abundance of users, at least a few of which have audited the code and share your use case. And these users aren't just neutral third parties. Nay, they're better than that. They, too, value their own privacy, and are therefore motivated to protect it.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bartread wrote: post #43
cosmojg wrote: post #17

Earlier 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.

> Want to know what data of yours, if any, is being collected? Look at the code. I find this to be an extremely un-compelling position. A relatively small proportion of the general population has the skills to meaningfully look at the code, never mind the time. Moreover, even for someone who is capable, such an exercise quickly becomes non-trivial on an unfamiliar codebase for an app of any complexity. In many cases…

> I find this to be an extremely un-compelling position

It's more damaging than that. The bundling of privacy and FOSS advocacy weakens the former. Few without deep technical knowledge is sympathetic to FOSS. The potential audience for a privacy pitch is broader. By bundling the two, however, the technical advocacy community limits the appeal of the former to those supporting the latter. This is an issue because the opponents of privacy rights are not similarly limited. Hence, we find ourselves reliant on Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon being benevolent dictators, in their services and Washington.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#46

Post by tehabe »

The worst thing, the absolute worst thing is, you know all that but you have gotten so used to the way Google services work, that you simply have a hard time to switch.

E.g. thank to Gmail I rarely use an email application on my computer and use webmail. When I tried out Posteo it was extremely annoying that it logged me out every few minutes and I couldn't get my email. They said this couldn't be changed.

Google really did an excellent job of supply me with services which I want to use. Not just tools which are working well.

BTW, Google doesn't use all its services to sell or personalise ads. Which doesn't mean they don't use them to learn more about you which in turn is used to improve the services so that you them even more.

So as much as I wish I could restore my privacy by leaving Google, I think Google knows me too well that I won't for now.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#47

Post by taneq »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #30

Recently 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…

> None of my personal data / content is scanned or looked at (I think?)

How can you say "for privacy [...] it's been amazing" if you haven't even checked?

They do say "Google does not collect, scan, or use your data in G Suite services for advertising purposes" and "Google does not sell [your] data to third parties" which mostly covers it, though (although ideally they'd strengthen the wording in the first part to say they don't use your data for any purposes other than to provide it to you... but now I'm just being picky.)

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#48

Post by taneq »

auslander wrote: post #31

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.

Are there any clients these days which don't have external content downloading disabled by default?

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#49

Post by saagarjha »

AtomicOrbital wrote: post #5
nemothekid wrote: post #2

I'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…

I am on linux ... just tried Apple Maps - horrid ... it fails to permit location search by zip code ... just show the globe and let me zoom around - fail ... forced me to login - fail ... unable to enter arbitrary address - talk about slurping personal data ... unbelievably evil

What are you going on about? Apple Maps does all of those things, without asking for login information.

Re: Alternatives to Google Products

#50

Post by dingo_bat »

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).

Outlook's focused and other segregation works well enough for me. I like the fact that in case of a miscategorization, it gives you very clear and explicit knobs to turn. Gmail classification always remains somewhat mysterious to me.
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