Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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I disagree. EVERYTHING Google offers has some sort of alternative. Will it take more effort? Sure. But I have been Google free for over 2 years now and I have not once been unable to do anything because Google has some imagined exclusivity.
Start here for apps
CalyxOS
GrapheneOS
And for the diehard there's the Fairphone
I'm typing this message on GrapheneOS. My point isn't that it's completely impossible but rather that degoogling basically has to become your hobby in order to fully do it. It requires a level of effort that's not practical for the average person so its unreasonable to expect everyone to do it. Also, FOSS and non-google alternatives are often not as good as the service google provides for free, like Google Maps. I use OSMAnd as my daily maps app, but its pretty finnicky and isn't anywhere close to the smooth, polished experience of Google Maps, and its lacking some important functionality. I still use it, because I'm committed to trying to avoid Google software as much as possible, but its definitely not the best experience.
Also, a lot of institutions andemployers use the G-Suite and so its impoesible for people that have to do business with those organizations to be entirely free of google. My university uses the G-Suite and when school comes back in the fall I'll be stuck using it again. The local school district does too.