Now, I am hoping I am not the only one in this community who has realized that privacy should be one of the top considerations when choosing what software to use on any device.
Leaving Reddit has been the catalyst for me to realize this, as silly as that might sound, and now I have to re-evaluate my list of “convenient” apps that are in NO WAY secure or private.
I want to ask everyone here if they have any recommendations for essentially replacement applications for all of the major categories of software that we use on our computers and mobile devices.
For example, here are some of the switches I made today: Chrome Mobile > Opera Mobile Chrome Desktop > Opera Desktop Facebook Messenger > Signal Facebook Social Media > No alternative just deleted it.
My hope with this post is that we can have a discussion on privacy apps in general as trying to track down information for each sector one by one and test each out can be arduous.
To kick off the discussion here are some other categories that I have not figured out an answer for yet:
Search Engines (duckduckgo is mentioned a lot, why?) Operating Systems Cloud Storage Email Providers Podcasts Video/Music Services (Youtube, Paid services, etc) Environment Specific advice for Android, iOS, and any others.
Also if it makes sense, should we consider privacy when choosing, say, a news website to frequent? Or would browser choice ultimately be the decider there.
privacyguides.org has been a great resource for years now. They also have a community at !privacyguides@lemmy.one
Edit: Specifically the tools page if you’re only looking for recommendations
lemmy.one is run by the guy behind privacyguides as well :)
There is a Privacy Guides community there. Just subscribe.
Already have mate, since day one of joining Lemmy :)
Awesome! I knew there was gonna be a few resources like this, bookmarking it!
Yeah pretty much /thread
This is the best resource on the Internet for taking back privacy.
That said, it’s a long and exhausting road and every time I turn around I learn about some new way these companies are profiling me.
I make it a habit to check the site every so often since they update the recomendations quite a bit as new things come up.
Also please realize, that the Threadiverse is not so much about privacy. Pretty much everything we do here is public. Moving to the threadiverse is more about avoiding the “shitification” movement at R$, and the other sorts of user manipulation, and walled gardening that are happening or may happen.
Yeah I was trying not to mix the two up, so my apologies for that. I will say that it seems privacy and open-source are talked about together quite often so maybe that’s part of it.
Only mentioned just to make sure you were clear. There has also been discussions in other threads about this which tended to suggest people are not thinking all that clearly about this. I am highly pro-threadiverse and though I take steps to be kind of anonymous, privacy is not a driving force for me choosing the threadiverse.
Privacy is not one thing anyway and never complete, and FOSS is not one thing too. For example, that though I like these privacy sites like Privacy Guides and others I will not always agree with their choices and suggestions. Part of this is that my goals, sensibilities, and experience may differ for example. For example, I did not see Privacy Guides recommend any of the main line Debian distributions, but I only use Debian and Ubuntu and personally for me they are just fine. Similarly with Firefox. Lot of people always recommending other stuff typically Chromium based browsers. For me this is nuts simply because I am not interested in a Google and Ad dominated web. Everyone has their arguments, I just do not always have to agree.
As for FOSS. There are a lot of aspects and privacy, security, and transparency are some common aspects that are related but are often mixed and confused. FOSS does not guarantee privacy and security and all security and privacy is porous and never total anyway. On the other hand I tend to believe that you never really have enough transparency to even evaluate it in closed software. Too many examples of closed systems purposely doing stuff that is anti-user on one hand, and on the other, just having rushed poorly designed systems without any possibility of review on the other.
Sorry to say that but opera is a really bad choice for privacy, actually on of the worst. https://youtu.be/k8hUs0W-UWY
It’s a shame what happened to that browser. It was groundbreaking at one time.
Yeah I was mostly in a hurry to get off of Chrome, I am definitely open to criticisms. Any chance you could sum up the points in the video?
If you want a browser that gives you better privacy options then that video is a good one to watch. He does a pretty good job of breaking down most of them. They are all indexed too so you can jump right to any browser you want an overview on. Opera starts right about at 12 minutes.
To do a crappy tldr for opera: unfortunately it was the worst tested. It didn’t do things like block trackers, 3rd party cookies, set do not track, or really anything by default. It has a policy that allows them to share info collected from you with 3rd parties. They’re Chinese owned, so they could be compelled to turn that data over to the Chinese government. Some of the options you can change yourself, but the company is not very trustworthy and you’re better off going with anything else in the meantime.
It’s a fucking shame because the browser itself has roots all the way back to 1994 and they pioneered a lot of browser features that we take for granted now like pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing.
Yeah I gotta say part of the reason I initially downloaded opera was cause I had known of it already. I didn’t know it was Chinese owned. No such thing as privacy in China.
I switched to vivaldi now, although I haven’t been able to watch the video yet. Is there a few main reasons to avoid opera?
Search Engines (duckduckgo is mentioned a lot, why?) Operating Systems Cloud Storage Email Providers Podcasts Video/Music Services (Youtube, Paid services, etc) Environment Specific advice for Android, iOS, and any others.
Duckduckgo is mentioned because it does not log what you search for so every time you return its like you are a first time visitor
- Operating systems: pretty much any linux will do. I suggest Ubuntu
- cloud storage: none. Cloud = someone else’s computer. Get an external SSD.
- Email: ProtonMail or Tutanota
- Podcasts: platform dependent, but AntennaPod for Android
- video: Youtube via nvidius, piped, or Newpipe
I think one other thing (as many other posters have mentioned great resources already, so I’d just be reiterating what you’ve already said) to consider is that …it doesn’t have to happen all at once. You can move one thing at a time, you don’t have to burn yourself out or exhaust yourself trying to set up everything in one day, or read up on every little thing. take your time, evaluate your options. don’t feel locked in to anything, since things can always change.
I personally use:
- Proton Mail (and their other apps as well, including SimpleLogin, aside from their password manager. I personally find it worth it to pay for their services. I used Tutanota in the past)
- Librewolf (as a browser, I used to use Vivaldi but I wanted to move away from Chrome, however I still like Vivaldi, for the record)
- Bitwarden (password manager)
- Kagi (as a search engine, I’m very fond of it and splitting the cost of a duo subscription with my partner. I used to use Ecosia)
- various web browser extensions (canvas blocker, uMatrix, Librewolf has uBlockOrigin baked in)
- Pi-hole (was my first raspberry pi project ever! I’m still very proud of figuring this out on my own)
- Invidious (I use it instead of Youtube specifically, as a Youtube front-end, and I prefer it a lot, it’s so much less busy and thus easier for me to focus on the video)
- Yubikey (for what it works for, I just feel safer using one)
I have plans to move to a home media server where I can store my photos, shows, and music. although this is kind of above what I’m capable of, so I’m getting help.
I think it’s awesome you’re trying to get more opinions, and I hope you find things that work for you!
Thank you for your additions to this discussion, I don’t think I knew any of those you mentioned. Kagi is very interesting to me, but I have top give it some thought as to what my actual use is for search engines. I’ve never considered there were paid services and what that might mean. The sample searches on there are awesome. 10 searches a day for 5$ isn’t bad but I don’t know how often I search. I have a feeling I am going to be referencing this post over and over again!😂
After years of just feeling like it was an overwhelming task to take on, I recently figured it was time to make some changes. I figure any change is good change, so started with things like moving to Firefox (and Kiwi on mobile) and adding some privacy focused add ons.
I spent a weekend moving from LastPass to Bitwarden and changing tons of passwords.
Then I spent a day setting up Nextcloud on a spare RPi I had around, so now syncing photos, contacts, and calendar there.
This week, I opened a Protonmail account and moved my personal address there instead of using Gmail.
The Privacy Guide link someone posted looks great. I’ll definitely use it to keep me thinking about what I can change. One step at a time, you know?
Yeah I think the most important thing I was able to get done this week was to setup Bitwarden and stop using the same password for everything in my life. It’s one of those things I just tried not to talk about lol
There are many resources across the web depending on what you are looking for: https://switching.software https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io https://www.btw.so/open-source-alternatives https://gitea.it/devol/Awesome-Privacy-servizi-web-open-source https://github.com/lissy93/awesome-privacy
Please note that these lists may not be completely up-to-date, but you find and a lot of useful tools there imho.
Some useful links also:
This is in addition to the great Privacy Guides link another commenter mentioned.
+1 for alternativeto. Searching for alternatives to popular apps using the filters like “Open Source” as well as operating system, privacy, etc… is a game changer. There’s also comment sections where people sometimes elaborate on certain things like differences between the app you’re comparing to.
I tried to write a guide about digital privacy awhile ago
https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page/2022/03/low-friction-introduction-to-digital-privacy/
I need to get back to it and update…
Re: Search Engines
DDG is mentioned a lot. There is tonnes of back and forth on the topic. Every now and then some change will rile people up and kick off another round. Kagi is mentioned frequently, and Qwant too. Mojeek is very private and very ad free. They have a small community that continuously tests and improves things. Results are not like you get with other search engines. DDG is a meta search and gets results from Bing. Brave has a crawler now but also gets results from other sources. Qwant is also just Bing too, I think. Lots of factors to consider and some people just go the Searx route.
Browsers
Browser-wise, Vivaldi is highly recommended. I don’t use it. Many browsers are wary to promise privacy. Tor is not recommended for daily browsing but new players like Mullvad are very promising.
YT
For me, a great benefit of using the different YT front ends is the lack of ads which makes the UX all the better.
Email
Email is a hard choice. There are some great options but you’ll have to do the leg work to find out what works for you. I went for Mailbox and I am happy.
For example, here are some of the switches I made today: Chrome Mobile > Opera Mobile Chrome Desktop > Opera Desktop Facebook Messenger > Signal Facebook Social Media > No alternative just deleted it.
Some of these replacements are just sending your data to a different organization. For example, Opera is no more secure than Chrome. You will want to check out privacy-focused browsers, like Tor Browser, Mullvad’s, or xombrero. Signal’s server is closed-source, and it requires a phone number, so it is not as private as alternatives like Matrix.
Search Engines (duckduckgo is mentioned a lot, why?)
DuckDuckGo is closed-source and just white labels Bing results. It basically functions as a proxy server to Bing. A more private option is Searx since you can self-host it.
Operating Systems
Yup, you need to use Linux here. MacOS and Windows are closed-source and phone home for telemetry and automatic software upgrades. They also try to make you log in to a iCloud or Microsoft account.
Cloud Storage
Don’t use it unless you encrypt it end-to-end. (As in, only upload files that are already encrypted, don’t trust the provider’s server-side encryption, which is functionally useless.) (A “simple” way to do this is mount the cloud storage as a network drive and layer FUSE encryption on top of it, I think it’s either EncFS or eCryptFS?)
Email Providers
This one is hard. The larger email hosts give you the most anonymity because you’re sharing the server with multiple other users. But the larger ones also scan your emails for ads and training AI, like Gmail. You can host your own email (which is not as hard as it sounds, and gives you complete control over the encryption scheme) but this is less private because the server’s IP belongs to one single user. My compromise here is to use a paid, independent email host.
Environment Specific advice for Android, iOS, and any others.
iOS isn’t customizable enough for serious privacy and security. You can’t even change the default browser. On Android, there is https://grapheneos.org/.
undefined> Cloud Storage
Don’t use it unless you encrypt it end-to-end. (As in, only upload files that are already encrypted, don’t trust the provider’s server-side encryption, which is functionally useless.) (A “simple” way to do this is mount the cloud storage as a network drive and layer FUSE encryption on top of it, I think it’s either EncFS or eCryptFS?)
Very interesting, I was considering writing off the idea of using cloud services altogether but that makes a lot of sense. Don’t trust their encryption.
I’ve been using kagi as a search engine for a while. Imo they show pretty strong understanding of why you shouldn’t rely on ad-supported search engines. My experience with searx is that it’s incredibly slow and I feel that search engines are things that should be constantly maintained, so self hosting it feels like a bit of a hassle.
https://restoreprivacy.com/ has detailed articles where they compare and evaluate most popular privacy oriented software