I found a link to where you can see everything Google has been recording on our about you and I’m shocked, especially at the voice recordings and reported activities that are nothing to do with any of Google’s projects.
https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
You have to be logged into Google in for it to work, but it has changed the way that look at my phone.
Yep… they’re as nosy as I thought they were.
This is why I’m trying to de-google my life.
Absolutely! What’s surprising to me is how much people don’t care about this. I showed it to my wife and she was very mildly interested to see what they had on her, but it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She essentially thought it was cool that they could do that so she’d see ads tailored for her when browsing.
My wife had the opposite reaction. Deleted her personal Gmail immediately.
I’m an experienced sysadmin, and decided to run my own server. Only way to know my data is mine alone.
I considered it, but didn’t go through with it – at least not yet. I have a domain name (currently not in use), and thought about setting up a DO droplet for mail and Nextcloud. I am not an experienced sysadmin, more of an advanced user. I have some experience with setting up and maintaining other types of servers (HTTP, DNS, SQL) that I’ve used for various projects over the years, but the “word on the street” is that you should really know what you’re doing before tackling a mail server.
As an experienced sysadmin, what do you think?
Email is hard. If you don’t have the experience of running one, I’d recommend against it. If you want to run one just to get experience, and not use it for anything real, go for it. It’s always good to gain experience.
If you don’t have the time to dedicate to building a real secure email server and maintain it, you are better off using a provider like proton mail.
I’ve noticed there are a lot of people who want to get Google out of their lives but don’t know where to start. I put together this doc which the community is free to edit and add to as a starting point. I’ve tried to keep the items here at a technical level that everyone can participate. HackMD Document
Replacing e-mail is definitely the biggest problem. There is plenty of Polish portals where I could sign up for a decent free or cheap e-mail service. The issue is that these addresses are often automatically blocked as a spam source outside Polish part of the web. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same happens with small e-mail providers like Proton Mail, Tutanota or Vivaldi. Has anyone experienced this kind of problems? Also, there is a big chance that Gmail is not gonna disappear suddenly and the same cannot be said about smaller providers. Losing your main e-mail account overnight would be painful.
Anyone wanting to setup their own email server, but do not have the knowledge, experience, or time can take a look at an open source Script call iRedMail. It does all the setup, and management for you. It even sets up a Outlook compatible Calendar system.
For those who take getting email serious, I would not recommend they use one of those LowEndBox specials as those things are always having issues.
Great additions to the document! Really appreciate the help.
While I have read that Google does not track what sites you visit directly through chrome, if you use a home on Android, they sure seem to. I really don’t think I like that and will make sure I use a Firefox on my phone more than I have previously. Then all they know is that I used the app. I am more worried about Facebook, but Google is able to be more invasive since they have the phone OS and it sends everything back.
I assure you Google does track everything you do on their Android telephone, and on Chrome.
Here is just a fine example.
If you still insist on using Android & FIrefox, may want to consider Waterfox. They recently released their Firefox fork to the Play store.
If you pay close attention to items you click on which have a URL (such as from their Gmail app), you will see a Google link appear for a moment before going to the actual site.
Another great way to help get Google out of your life. Setup a file syncing service of your own such as Seafile or Nextcloud. Being able to send photos and videos directly to your own server that you control is a great feeling.
It depends on your approach really. Email is just email and unless it is encrypted end to end the whole world sees it. So with that fact in mind if you want to minimise google’s reach what you should be doing is making email collection a single static point that gives no more information about where you are or what devices you are on when you pick it up. Of course if you can persuade people to use GPG encryption and a client like Enigmail which now anonymises the subject title.
Set up a home email server that uses fetchmail to pick up email from Google’s IMAP server and then delete it off the server. You can then connect to your home server by wireguard or Tinc or other personal VPN and pick your email that way. Don’t use GoogleMail client use something like K-9 Mail instead, combined with Open KeyChain you can send and receive encrypted email from your mobile device.
That should minimise some of what Google can tell about your movements and devices and how much they can profile you.
They are aready profiling the emails you receive. I stopped using it altogether.
In light of recent events such as this:
Your site should be pinned somewhere in the forum, along with reasons why in a brief statement
or this?