long post alert; forgive my mistakes, not a native english speaker, also, this is my first post on Lemmy, I come from Reddit where I deleted my account >0-0<

some years ago, I stumbled upon digital privacy related forums and I started to realize the deep hole I was stuck in.

My digital life was totally reliant on Google and its multiple products: Google Photos, Gmail, Google Chrome, Chrome Passwords, Youtube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Pay, Google Android, Google Sheets, Google Chat/Hangout, Google Keep, Google Maps, Google Search.

Just writing all these names makes me re-realize how a single advertising company holds so much control on our digital lives.

It has been a long 6 years journey to reach pretty close to complete deGoogling. This journey has been filled with lots of ups and down, philosophical questioning on what digital freedom is and whether it truly is important, and lots of despair also (questions such as “what is the point of it all?” that I am sure many of us ask ourselves).

I am a normal “average” human being whose intention of having digital privacy is to ward off advertising companies, and to not be a pawn in their big money game. My intention and requirement is NOT to become anonymous.

My digital system is as follows now:

Google Android: Used LineageOS for a long time on an OnePlus device. It worked fantastic, zero troubles at all. But when my phone died, I switched to an iPhone to avoid the long term hassle of flashing.

Google Chrome: Firefox with uBlock Origin on Mac. Safari private browsing on iPhone. App Limit of 1 hour per day to reduce my problematic time-consuming browsing habits.

Gmail: iCloud Email for banking/finance. Proton Mail for everything else. All existing emails from Gmail transferred to local folders using Thunderbird, backed up on external hard drive and Filen.io.

Google Photos: Direct transfer from phone to computer in year-month folders, encrypted rclone sync to work OneDrive (multiple TB free space), and regular backups to external hard drive. I am still looking to move away from the rclone encryption (which works perfectly btw) to a more simpler, less complicated, cloud service but I have not finalized on one yet.

Chrome Passwords: KeePass! It is amazing!

Google Drive: Combination of external hard drive, encrypted rclone remote in OneDrive, and Filen.io.

Google Docs: Word documents or text files backed up using encrypted cloud.

Google Sheets: Excel files backed up using encrypted cloud.

Google Chat/Hangout: WhatsApp, Signal. WhatsApp is almost impossible to get rid of despite how clunky and disgusting it has become.

Google Keep: Apple Notes and plain text files.

Google Maps: Use it logged out. Tried OSMand, but it is not as good as G Maps yet.

Google Search: Still use it without loggin in, and sometimes DuckDuckGo.

Youtube: Still use it in private window, without logging in. I use it as if it is Wikipedia. My Youtube usage is very low.

Music: Apple Music.

Hopefully this is helpful to some. Please feel free to provide suggestions and/or ask if you have questions on how I made any of the above transitions; I would be happy to help since I have learned so much from the broader privacy community.

  • Skellysgirl@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    I have started this in the last year, I hadn’t considered it by breaking it down by media consumption/storage/browsing habits etc. I am so sick of feeling alike a sales target, and a tool that can be influenced. I do also like the idea of attacking it by provider. I have recently started to cut Amazon out, gotten rid of my Alexa’s, stopped buying and my fire sticks are going soon.

    An area I struggle with is maps and travel. I am iPhone and I like to listen to tunes when I am driving and I rely on maps, for routes and to find local services coffee food etc. sometimes I feel like my own worst enemy in my quests.

    • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      14 hours ago

      :) haha, yes you are right and i do realize this. i guess i am doing what suits my preferences and life the best and choosing the lesser evil. as i mentioned in my post, flashing custom roms on my devices for the remaining years of my life is not convenient for me.

  • Hellmo_luciferrari@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    Digital Privacy is an ever evolving endeavor. What I was okay with a year ago, isn’t the same as where I am today.

    I am still mid-journey of de-googling, de-microsofting, de-big-techifying my life.

    The more and more the digital landscape changes, the more and more we have to be cautious of.

    I went from using all the google services, all of the microsoft services, and more of big tech’s services. But at what cost? What was free really only made me the product. My data was and still is to some degree being used, bought, sold by many different providers.

    So I have been working towards self-hosting anything that matters to me. File storage, self hosted. Media consumption, self hosted (mostly.)

    I have one as far as running a pihole, with my own upstream DNS. Mix that with the only way to access my self hosted things through VPN. And beyond that other security/privacy measures.

    The goalpost for being more private, and more secure, is ever changing. The goal is to minimize my exposure.

    • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      14 hours ago

      thanks for your response. I completely agree with you; the goalpost is always changing. it is really wonderful that you are doing a lot of self-hosting! do you use nextcloud for serving your self hosted files on the cloud? i guess self-hosting won’t work for me since i am usually always on the move :D

      • Hellmo_luciferrari@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        12 hours ago

        I don’t Nextcloud currently, but I have considered it. Currently I have everything I want on a drive connected to my docker box, and if I need it I SCP it to or from that server. My need for files stored at home isn’t exactly huge. But nextcloud or similar is in the pipeline.

        I am on the move often too, but because I can VPN into my network, and use the pihole+unbound DNS on my GrapheneOS phone all the time, I always have access to my stuff.

  • UraniumBlazer@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    Try using Organic Maps for OSM. Much more beautiful than osmAnd imo. As for office, try using LibreOffice. Very beautiful and smooth software!

    • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      2 days ago

      thank you so much for the suggestions; do you know if there is a way to use Organic Maps on iphone? similarly, I did use LibreOffice many years ago when I was using Ubuntu on my old laptop, but ever since i moved to macbook, i never thought about it, i should give it a try once again. thank you again for sharing!

      also, you have no idea how happy you made me by giving me my first comment on my first lemmy post!!

      • trueheresy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        There is an Organic Maps ios app which I use to mostly good effect. Occasionally have to fall back to Google maps and then I make a note to update OSM with the details missing where possible later.

      • UraniumBlazer@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        thank you so much for the suggestions; do you know if there is a way to use Organic Maps on iphone?

        No worries <3! Isn’t it on the App store? On looking it up, it shows that it’s available here. I don’t know though, as I don’t own any Apple devices.

        I did use LibreOffice many years ago … i should give it a try once again.

        Definitely! I’m a sucker for the native gtk apps. So I may be a little biased when I say this, but it’s WAY better than Microsoft office from a UI standpoint. All Microsoft products just feel cheap to me.

        also, you have no idea how happy you made me by giving me my first comment on my first lemmy post!!

        Awww I’m so glad haha. Guess what? I’m developing a Lemmy client app right now, and this is the first “real” comment I made which was outside the pure test oriented comments! Interesting firsts, eh?

        • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          14 hours ago

          <3 wow it is a big coincidence! i wish your lemmy client app becomes very famous :D is it an ios app? do you want to share the link if it is available for everyone to download?

          agreed on cheap MS products. i feel the same too.

  • privateX@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    Well done on deGoogling. Until the recent Apple ADP switch off in the UK I was as entrenched in Apple’s walled garden as you were in Google’s.

    Now I’m 100% Apple free. I even swapped my one year old iPhone 15 Pro Max for a Pixel with CalyxOS installed.

    Welcome to having an actual private life. It’s great.

    • vfsh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      2 days ago

      I’m right there alongside you, was pretty deep in Apple and decided to pick up an unlocked Pixel 8 and start working on de-Appleing and de-Googling as much as possible. I’m using Lineage for now, after trying Graphene for a bit.

      I’m beyond pissed at how much money I’ve spent on apple products that are either almost entirely useless now (apple watch) or are severely nerfed (airpods, Apple TV, just even signing into a fucking Apple account with MFA) now that I don’t use an iPhone.

        • vfsh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          13 hours ago

          I wrote up a whole thing on Discord but can’t find it now, but the gist of it is that at the moment I’m not particularly worried about my phone being compromised via exploits and my safety isn’t immediately at risk. My big motivator at the moment is trying to give Google duller claws to sink into me, and Lineage is fine for that at the moment.

          Graphene due to its nature sacrifices a lot of quality of life features in the name of security. I found that a few apps would simply segfault on open, even with the security options disabled for the app. Multitasking was essentially non-existent, swiping between two apps trying to reference then type something? Good luck, both apps will do a complete reload on every swipe. Small things like that. Graphene is definitely a viable option if or when shit absolutely hits the fan and I am concerned about safety and exploits, but for now I’m much more happy on Lineage.

          • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
            2·
            13 hours ago

            Understood, thanks for taking the time to explain!

            I made the exact opposite move xD. I moved from Lineage to iphone since I felt it is a good middle ground for me.

  • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
    5·
    2 days ago

    I can highly recommend Magic Earth as a Google Maps alternative (also available for Android). It uses OSM data and has some traffic info. It’s not as good as Google, but it’s the closest I’ve found so far.

      • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        7 hours ago

        I actually use both apps, I find Organic Maps a lot nicer for looking at a map and navigating by foot or bike, and Magic Earth seems to pick more sensible car routes some times. Also the live traffic data makes it more fitting for car navigation (Organic Maps doesn’t have traffic data).

    • asther_omansdo@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      14 hours ago

      i am really glad you asked this question. my reasoning is as follows, please let me know if you have further thoughts/suggestions on this.

      i am assuming that iCloud/Apple do not mine my emails for advertising/profiling purposes. i know that proton does not. most of my banking/financial dealings is with governmental entities. i do not want to be seen by banks etc. as the odd man out because they see my protonmail account in their database.

      on the other hand, everything else is with companies, which i do not care about that much, hence i use the more private protonmail.

      and to reiterate, my main purpose is to stop being profiled by big tech and google. so this icloud/proton combination works for me.

      sorry for bad english. pls let me know if you have suggestions! >0_0<

    • Vignesh@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      Not OP, but using a similar setup: iCloud for government, banks, and a custom domain with Proton Mail for everything else. A few major banks here in my country have hardcoded domain names to include only Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and a few local providers. The same is true for the Income Tax portal. Out of the given options, iCloud is relatively more private.

      I’ve encountered a few other websites doing this kind of lazy implementation. Hide My Email by Apple works in such cases too, where I don’t want to disclose my primary iCloud address, which is accepted globally especially since it ends with @icloud.com.

  • J_on_Lemmy@lemm.ee
    3·
    2 days ago

    On iPhone/iOS you can download content blockers to have adblocking on it(Limited to Safari only); Personally I use Adguard Pro.

    I think I’ve seen some people use a VPN/DNS to have systemwide blocking but I’ve not looked into that personally as my router supports it.

    I use Collabora Office as my Office Suite, again on iOS; LibreOffice on my computers.