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Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

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Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#51

Post by steelframe »

mikedilger wrote: post #40

ReCaptcha is about the only google product that I still have to use... some 15% of websites I use eventually make me reCaptcha. Everything else is blocked with pihole/uMatrix/pf. Been this way for about six months now. Occasionally I still youtube-dl from a server and scp the file locally.

You don't have to use ReCaptcha. You just elect to do your business in another way or with another company. For example, I was a lifelong member of a regional bicycling club until they started trying to force me to solve ReCaptchas whenever I'd need to log in to their web site, and they stopped accepting membership dues and event registration fees by a check in the mail. That was easy enough: I stopped giving them money, and I started self-supporting on any ride events they held out on public roads. My kid's pediatrician threw a ReCaptcha in my face after I entered all the information to make an online payment. I closed the tab and sent them a check.

At first I got passive-aggressive about it. I would purposely fail the ReCaptcha and then contact support to tell them it wasn't working. They'd always provide a workaround. But then I realized it was easier just to stop giving them my business. For me personally, so far it really hasn't been any kind of big inconvenience.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#52

Post by mhasbini »

booi wrote: post #48
chopin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to avoid services which use ReCaptcha as much as I can.

What do you replace it with?

Disclaimer: I was part of hCaptcha team.

https://hcaptcha.com/ is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA.

It's privacy focused (supports privacy pass), and is fair: webmasters get a cut for each captcha that is solved correctly (they can choose to directly donate it to a charity of their choice), hCaptcha get a cut for running the service and a customer will get their images/data labeled.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#53

Post by newscracker »

seiferteric wrote: post #28

I am going down this road atm. I just signed up for fastmail, but I don't see it on this list, does anyone have any comparisons with the others listed? My main concern was being able to use my own domain.

Fastmail is a company based out of Australia using data centers in the U.S. The Five Eyes concern is why it may not be listed in privacy focused sites.

To use your own domain, I’d recommend other services that are a lot cheaper than Fastmail, focused on privacy and are not in the Five Eyes (but may be in Fourteen Eyes). Check out mailbox.org, runbox.com and lastly, Migadu for a fixed price for unlimited mailboxes/storage (prices are based on outgoing mails sent per day).

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#54

Post by x__x »

dempedempe wrote: post #29

I'm surprised to see that Fastmail is not listed as a Gmail alternative. I've tried it, Protonmail, and Zoho as replacements. IMO, Fastmail has the simplest interface and best suite of tools. I had trouble setting up an alias with Protonmail. Fastmail provides very clear instructions for this right on the app. Zoho was cool in that it lets you use a custom alias for free, but it just felt too cluttered. I also rememb…

Doesn't FastMail serve Google Ads?

From Wiki:

"In newer versions, the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed. "

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#55

Post by newscracker »

Spearchucker wrote: post #13

There are a whole lot of products and services in that list I haven't heard of so will be checking those out. Notable about the list is the absence of anything from Microsoft. I cannot (will not, truth be told) do without Office and Exchange. Are all the items in that list free? Finally, I hope to see affordable and credible, non - Apple alternatives to Android some time. Still on Windows Phone which to this day has…

If you’re not collaborating with others who won’t change their habits and your needs aren’t very complex, then LibreOffice is a relatively good enough alternative to MS Office.

It’s difficult to recommend anything without knowing why you prefer MS Exchange, but there should be options depending on your needs.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#56

Post by newscracker »

godelski wrote: post #37
hardlianotion wrote: post #19

Looked at the site. Not sure I understand what flagging the services as 5-eyes, etc. is supposed to mean. Perhaps - sponsored by 5-eyes (that seems to miss the point) - prevents spying by 5-eyes? This seems strange also. Clarifications welcomed.

The idea is that if you operate a server in -eyes territories then your data is not secure. I'm not sure I buy this argument though. We've seen companies just not hold onto data, be served, and release "sorry we got nothing". AFAIK you don't have to create backdoors for the NSA. Canaries are legal. You don't have to store data. So listing if a service is from a -eyes country misses the point really. Point being if th…

What you missed in your reply is the fact that your view is completely U.S. centric. Australia legally requires companies to build backdoors and not disclose them if mandated by the government. Lookup the Assistance and Access Bill from more than a year ago and the concerns around it.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#58

Post by doctor_eval »

jeena wrote: post #16

I almost successfully cut Google out with one exception, YouTube, I don't seem to be able to find what I get there anywhere else. Fun anecdote: Google is very smart, because I've been a paying customer of YouTube for a long time they gave me a Google Nest Mini for Christmas free of charge. And it fills another niche which I can't really find a meaningful alternative for: Speech to text hardware/software which can be…

Siri can control your smart home and doesn’t phone home (any more). You can hook it up with a raspberry pi to control just about anything, including generic zigbee devices.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#59

Post by judge2020 »

ignoramous wrote: post #36
jeena wrote: post #16

I almost successfully cut Google out with one exception, YouTube, I don't seem to be able to find what I get there anywhere else. Fun anecdote: Google is very smart, because I've been a paying customer of YouTube for a long time they gave me a Google Nest Mini for Christmas free of charge. And it fills another niche which I can't really find a meaningful alternative for: Speech to text hardware/software which can be…

Could one use AWS AppStream [0] or Mighty [1] or similar tech to proxy-view YouTube? [0] https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/ [1] https://mightyapp.com/

I bet you would only get a few pages loaded before being captcha'd since the IP is still one of a cloud provider.

Re: Cutting Google out of your life (2019)

#60

Post by vanniv »

ignoramous wrote: post #42
dehrmann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Captcha This one's scary from an infrastructure perspective. Way too many websites depend on Recaptcha, and an outage would be somewhat painful. There aren't tons of competitors, so with Google's penchant for killing services, it puts things at risk.

> There aren't tons of competitors, Cloudflare, being the Internet security company that it is, I believe, should roll out its own captcha or equivalent solution, even if only for the traffic it fronts. They kind of have got all the tools in the bag to make a splash with such an offering.

Cloudflare isn't really any better than Google.

Really, they're worse. If Cloudflare decides you should not be, you're not allowed to use the internet at all. The last thing we need is to give them even more power.

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