Why You Should DeGoogle
>> Alternatives to Google here <<
(Article below originally from Reddit deGoogling community)
Do you act the same in public vs in private?
Once your data is out there, you no longer have control over it. It was said best during this Ted Talk by Glenn Greenwald – Why Privacy Matters
From Glenn Greenwald’s Ted Talk, “You’re giving up your rights. Your saying hey, ‘I don’t think I’m going to need them so I’m just going to trust that, Let’s get rid of them it doesn’t matter. These guys are going to do the right thing’. Your rights matter because you never know when your going to need them.
“People should be able to pick up the phone and call their family. People should be able to send a text message to their loved one. People should be able to buy a book online, they should be able to travel by train, they should be able to buy an airline ticket without wondering how these events are going to look.. To an agent of the government, possibly not even your government. Years in the future, how they’re going to be misinterpreted and what they’re going to think your intentions. We have a right to privacy.“
Ted Talk – Edward Snowden, Here’s how we take back the internet
To start, google is one of the digital advertising companies. PDF Link to a study done on: Google Data Collection by Professor Douglas C. Schmidt
Here are Richard Stallman’s reasons not to use Google
A few highlights are
Nonfree Software Required, Closed Source. What’s going on behind the scenes? Where do they send our data, what else do they use it for?
Surveillance. Google is everywhere on the web. Ever get annoyed by clicking on pictures of buses, signs, crosswalks, etc in those ReCaptchas? That’s helping Google’s AI learn. They track mouse movements, typing, response time, and ping your captcha box to determine your location.
Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5
Google also records any voice data given by users from Google Voice to text, nest, Google Home and many others. It was discovered that Google’s nest listens. If you were logged in, you can find all recordings from voice to text here
Google is not the only one doing such things. Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, PayPal, Microsoft and many other corporations do very similar.
Article – My phone is spying on me, so I decided to spy on it
Ted Talks – Finn Myrstad, How Tech Companies Deceive you into giving up your data and privacy
Just a few of previous incidents:
In 2019 by October, there were over 104 data breaches
Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales Alt: Source
MasterCard is mining Facebook users’ data to get consumer behaviour information it can sell to banks
Wikileaks dump shows CIA could turn smart TVs into listening devices
Samsungs warning our smart tvs record your living room chatter
Lawsuit against 4 Major wireless carriers on selling location data
Amazon Alexa – Conversations shared
Verizon Pays $1.4M for selling storing and selling customers’ info
6 Million Verizon Customers’ Info ”Leaked”
Facebook: Your Personal Info for Sale
Facebook – Some of the data they collect and sell
Smartphone apps Requesting unneeded permissions for data collection
Amazon accused of secretly recording kids with Echo Dot speakers
An Amazon employee might have listened to your Alexa recording
Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users
PayPal reveals it shares customers’ data with more than 600 companies
How CloudFlare and ReCaptcha are ruining the net, and what to do
Vizio admins modern tv sets are cheaper because they’re spying on you
Thanks to Facebook, Your Cellphone Company Is Watching You More Closely Than Ever
Millions of Instagram influencers had their contact data scraped and exposed
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made
You still can’t turn off Windows 10’s built-in spyware
Microsoft’s Software is Malware
Tech Crunch – Stop saying, ‘We take your privacy and security seriously’
You may still be skeptical. You say, “Okay, I see the articles you posted.. But why should I care? Why do I need to do anything? I’m happy with X company. I don’t care if they release my data.”
Have a look at these links if your still on the edge;
Why you should care about and defend your privacy
Article – Read this if you have nothing to hide
Compared to the days before the internet, everything is readily available. Such as your email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and more. How far is far enough?
After seeing what these some of the companies can and do store on their users, it’s up to you to decide on moving further. Majority of these large corporations do not care about users’ privacy. Since they don’t, there is only one person that can begin to make the change.
Check out our wiki for replacements. Don’t see it listed? Post a new thread asking the community.
Additional helpful resources:
The Complete Privacy and Security Podcast
https://youtube.tracking.exposed/ & https://facebook.tracking.exposed/
r/pihole & https://pi-hole.net – useful for blocking Google and other conglomerate/unwanted domains
What was your last straw? Anything you may have found out recently about your own privacy that has you concerned?
Original Comments
These were the comments on the original reddit:
- I’d call myself a mild degoogler…a couple years ago I took a good look at my life on the internet and realized Google had an insane amount of data on me, who I was, where I had been, every detail about me could be found with one stolen password or one data breach at Google.
Since then I’ve minimized my Google use as much as I can and take care to anonymize my persona better on the Internet, feeding fake information in places, etc. Just recently set up a pihole too.
But in the end Google does do some things well like Maps…and in other cases cannot be avoided without sacrificing usability I’m not willing to go for, like app availability and using my work apps on my Android phone (work really ended my days of having a rooted phone but I still found a way to get Lineage and Ad Away…)
I’d recommend that anyone thinking about degoogling but not really sure if they can/want to, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Just taking time to think about your privacy and being aware of where your data is going is a good start, disabling history and tracking on your google account are good starting baby steps that can protect you. - I believe complete degoogling is worse in many ways. This creates an abnormality in your profile. Which immeditaely becomes the subject of deeper scrutiny now or in the future.
The best strategy would be to continue on a facade of your usual activity. So you would lock in your current personality and web habits and continue these. Meanwhile you’re actual habits can be kept in the “degoogled” zone. This way you blend in and avoid more targeted tracking. Because google will fight back against those that try to escape it’s clutches.
The other alternative is to nuke your profile. Mix in your activity with random activity to an extent where it’s impossible to tell your true activity.
I personally have been aware and have been building the momentum, knowledge, and will to escape. It is very hard to decouple these services from your life. I haven’t made any progress yet. Partly because I’m crippled the indecision of which strategy to take. - The taking time to think is so true. Just being aware is important. Maybe the most important step. The internet should not be a place we have to block tracking in order to achieve privacy. We should not have to choose worse alternatives just because we don’t want to be tracked. The internet should be private by design. Data driven is not equal to individual profiling.
- +1 on pi-hole. I have started using it today
- I am PISSED, Goggle had EVERY FUC#ING thing i said with “ok google” saved, everything i did on chromecast, every freaking app i opened on my phone, even my location and stores i used to be when i lived across the country. If i knew before i would never gave my permission to them do this. Its insanity, it’s like a digital stalker, and it is good at it…
- Pissed at yourself? You agreed to these terms when you setup each device….
- Where did you find your chromecast history?
- What was your last straw?
Not necessarily a “last straw” just a culmination of things I was already realizing and taking steps to take out the offensive, intrusive elements on my network.
My big issue is not really ads per se. I understand that companies have to make a $ to stay afloat. However, over the past say 5 years it has increasingly become more and more invasive and intrusive, not that it already wasn’t. The ad itself doesn’t bother me as long as it doesn’t look like a porn site.
But my beef is all the java script bugs, trackers, data miners, et al. I don’t want my every move to be a data point that some company can harvest to make money off of.
It used to be said that if the service or item was free then you were the product. But not anymore. Even paying a website “not see ads” does not take away all the java script bugs, trackers, data miners, et al. They will take your money, turn off the “visible ads” but the trackers and the rest are just below the surface in the stack.
A point I’d like to make that is rather unpopular is that I don’t feel that labeling these companies as “evil” does the movement any favors. Give the facts, explain the solution, explain the benefits….but please, no “evil companies” rhetoric. - Thanks for this… I’ve been following this, ‘privacy’ and ‘stallman’ for a short while now and’ve decided I’d like to take some actions… but I’m not a computer guy :
(Won’t actually read this until later tonight, but I’m hoping it’ll show me where and how to get started (without having to go back to school).
Thanks again for the post and all your work on the sub. - Personally, I think Stallman is way over zealous and paranoid to the point of being delusional, but he does have some good points, especially about privacy.
- When making a choice, keep in mind that Yandex is the Russian equivalent of Google with its own trackers, hyper-local targeting and analytics.
- I recommend creating a post to get more exposure. To answer your question tho, It depends on what your looking for.
Will you be using any custom domains?
Do you need calendar integration, just nice to have or not needed?
Do you use or would like to use aliases? Such as using . – in the username and + at the end?
Any features in particular your looking for?
If in general, I would recommend looking into Protonmail, Tutanota, Fastmail, Posteo, Hushmail, Mailfence or Yandex Mail. to see which works the best for you/which ui you enjoy. - If you take a look at ThatOnePrivacySite you will get your solution
Data is slightly outdated but most comprehensive information available anywhere on internet right now - Is there a guide on this sub that shows you how to get rid of google? I understand how to use f- droid and install alternative apps, but some Google apps can’t be removed from my phone. Any help is appreciated.
- Currently, there is no official guide. The reason being, there are many ways to degoogle and rid your phone of the applications. As everyone has their own preference and it is especially dependent on each phone model.
Try using the search feature or creating a topic.
When creating a topic; the more information you give the higher the chance of helpful answers. Such as the model phone, what applications you want to get rid of, which you would like to keep (if they’re google related), and any other relevant information.
If you want to fully get rid of android, you can flash a custom rom such as r/lineageOS There are also two smartphones coming to market which will not have android as default os. They are still a few months away at this time, Librem 5 ($700) and the Pinephone (I believe $150-$250).
You seemed to infer your looking for ways to degoogle your phone, so the above references that. If your looking to degoogle your computer, questions could be; browser? addons? replacement services such as email/drive/calendar. - Thanks for creating this community
- Is it bad that I like the convenience of Google having so much data on me? Obviously what they want and wrong on a privacy level, but it’s pretty damn nice with the services they offer. Feel bad about it actually, but Maps/Mail/Docs/Hangouts/Chrome/Calendar/Assistant/etc are nice to use.
- Every user has their own preference. While i would like to see everyone degoogle. I know that’s not possible in today’s world. So the best I can do is help educate, what they do, what we should do and why we should take account for our data.
Once the data leaves your hands you will loose control. It could happen with a breach, data leak, rougue employee, sale of data, or exploit.
The only one you can trust with your data is yourself. In the year of 2019 alone, there were over 100 data breaches. That number will only grow in the coming years.
You have to decide what’s worth it for you. Would you rather get the service for ”free” and compromise your identity, personal information, data, web usage, location history, receipts, emails, calendars, texts, calls. When you give companies, especially one company access to all of those data, you loose control. Today google is ”secure”, what happens in the next year, 5 years? 10 years? They wont delete this data. Maybe they release it, a foreign company could purchase google and their information, maybe they make users data for sale to the public or private channels. The possibilities are endless.
If your still reading, i imagine I havn’t lost you and that your still at least somewhat interested in your own privacy. You should find a few companies you can get behind and support for the features you are in search of. The more we use, support and purchase alternative services, the bigger, better, stronger they will become. The bigger they get, the more funding, meaning better security and more features.
Right now we are on the forefront of privacy oriented services, i hope one day they will be standard… until that point, we can only continue to help grow and promote the companies that align with our own views. The only reason google got so big, was majorly due to the deal made with android. It was the default, just like windows was the ”default” operating systems for most companies selling computers. Due to user support, feedback, recognition and dedication, some companies are starting to offer computers shipped with Linux. How fantastic! And we are on the verge of getting better operating systems for phones, we’re so close to a point where the general public can easily use a privacy and security oriented devices with ease. So again, the more we support, the better these safer companies become.
If you still decide to use google, Microsoft, or any other nonrespecting service. That’s totally your call, but when your ready, r/degoogle or some form of degoogle will be there to help. Even if you wanted to start slow, replace each service one by one. Maybe start with searching (use searx, search.privacytools.io, duckduckgo, or another search engine of choice), then email and so on until your at your degoogle goal.
Edit: source of 2019 breaches https://www.identityforce.com/blog/2019-data-breaches - Minor sidenote: I lol’ed at the citation of Glenn Greenwald because nothing says privacy more than publishing leaked Telegram chat. One could argue he’s just doing investigative journalism but to me it’s still funny to see no one else but Glenn fucking Greenwald telling me privacy is important…
- Well I have a Google phone and my school requires Chromebooks to be used. So I’m fucked.