I’m in the midst of eliminating anything from my life that is connected to big tech. I’m going to delete my Amazon, and Google Accounts. I already deleted my Facebook. I’m working on getting my purchases downloaded and converted from Amazon as of writing this.
I’m going to get rid of Reddit as well. Sadly reddit has become super contaminated with censorship, and that is one of the hardest platforms for me to leave. It must be done though, i can no longer support their platform. Gmail will probably be the last thing to go. Already switched email services and i’m trying to get everything moved over. Years of connecting services to Gmail leaves me in a tangled mess.
I didn’t have a point really. I just wanted to tell people who might appreciate, and solidify my actions in my own mind. I’m trying to create a new self identity in a privacy focused environment.
I am in the middle of doing pretty much the same. Even though it takes some time, I can say it is definitely a good decision. The most difficult appears to be leaving or changing accounts connected to Gmail. Slowly but surly it is coming through though. Overall an interesting process, I must say. And healthy of course without a doubt.
ah, good to hear from a like minded individual. For so many years I trusted google, but the political situation over the last 5 years has really opened my eyes to what google, and its tech peers have become. Its soo bad
The more I learn, the more sick I am of what has happend to us and the internet as a whole. That and…. terrified of the implications, to be honest. Truly a sad story.
As someone who has already looked at all 14 options with regards to private, secure, and inexpensive email in a privacy friendly jurisdiction; I can try to save you some time and say you should probably look at Mailbox.org or Tutanota.com for a Gmail replacement.
I am using Tutanota for now, but I have never heard about Mailbox.org. I need to take a look on that. Thanks for the suggestion.
Mailbox.org has more features because they use an open source groupware called Open-Xchange. But TutaNota is built around privacy. I subscribe to both but I use Mailbox for work/calendar stuff more and Tuta for subscriptions and family.
I’ve been using posteo.de. Just curious if you had looked at them and had any thoughts. I also have a Tutanota account, but I currently like posteo.
I was using posteo but I have personal disagreements with it. 1) They use Roundcube for their webmail software. Roundcube is developed by crowdfund thieves. In 2015 they raised $120k USD from crowdfunders and then subsequently kept the money, and to this day haven’t debriefed funders with what they did with the money. They also shutdown any discussion on the topic on their github. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RoundCube-Next-2018 Point being, I asked Posteo about this and they told me they had no comment. It just seems unethical to use that software. On top of that Roundcube doesn’t hold calendar invites properly compared to TutaNota or Mailbox.org 2) Posteo actually outsources a lot of their email server maintenance to Heinlen, which is the company that runs Mailbox.org - I feel that if something goes wrong, mailbox.org would be up first.
Those are my only reasons why I don’t use Posteo actually, I don’t want to support Roundcube developers and I felt like their outsourcing to Mailbox made Mailbox a better choice. I never had problems with the Posteo service and it’s inexpensive. If you don’t care about the roundcube issue it’s a fine choice.
Thank you, that’s very informative. I’ll have to look into the things you’ve brought up.
Though I will say exploring the pro’s and con’s of each email provider and finding out the shell ownership of some of them (like Startmail, which is owned by a US-based data mining company,) is quite fun.
I’ve lived for a good two years without Google on my phone, this summer I had to put it back because of exposure notifications. I’m planning to get rid of it again shortly.
As for Amazon, it’s really hard to avoid to buy from them as we are in the middle of a pandemic and sometimes other alternatives are too expensive, even if I live in a western country (Italy). I’m trying to buy as much second hand products as I can and I’m actually surprised of how much I’ve been able to save for objects that are often still good and usable. Buying second-hand still involves big tech corps (eBay/Subito mostly) but at least it’s not Amazon and at least I’m not supplying further demand for new goods. And a lot of times I just rather go to the nearest physical shop instead of buying online (now it’s almost impossible since I have no time to go during the week and during the weekend most shops are closed). How’s going with Amazon though? What kind of products are you going to buy from somewhere else? I was using Amazon mostly for books, home stuff (like small furniture and disposable goods) and tech stuff (pc components, cables, hubs and this sort of things). Tech stuff are definitely the most comfortable to shop for because of the enormous choice Amazon offers
Sadly reddit has become super contaminated with censorship
What have they been censoring lately? Last time I’ve heard about communities being removed was with the ban wave that involved r/ChapoTrapHouse and other smaller subs. I’m a bit out of the loop, did they close other subreddits too?
MicroG supports exposure notifications! You could replace Google services with MicroG and only activate the exposure notifications and it’ll be like almost having a non-Google phone all over again.
Its just that Reddit is connected to all the other big tech conglomerates and its watched to closely, its getting creepy. I don’t really think i can point out specific examples. They banned Trump though, and for me that was the red flag. They are just censuring at their leisure now. As for Amazon, my plan is to try to buy direct from manufactures. I might use Amazon’s interface to browse, and then go else where to buy
Bear in mind, that deleting accounts in Big Tech won’t destroy the data that you’ve already given them…
for sure, all we can do is try to build habits that will help protect us and improve personal privacy
