Another deGoogled iPhone
A process that started roughly a year ago with just changing browser and search engine, now feeling that I got somewhere. The journey ended up being more than just degoogle, but also demetaing and taking more control over my data and privacy.
Before and after picture with notes:
Chrome -> Zen browser (Firefox on iOS)
Google -> Qwant
Gmail -> Proton Mail
NordVPN -> Proton VPN (I don’t use VPN very often, but have NordVPN through another subscription, now replaced with Proton across my devices)
Google Drive / Photos -> Proton Drive
Google Password Manager -> Proton Pass
Google Authenticator -> Proton Pass / Ente (Ente Auth is only used to store my 2FA keys for the Proton account, other keys are stored in Proton Pass)
Google Translator -> DeepL
YouTube -> FreeTube (Unwatched on iOS)
Google Maps -> Magic Earth (OSM on desktop)
WhatsApp -> Signal
Notion -> Anytype
Keep / Notes -> Notesnook
X -> Mastodon / Bluesky
Reddit -> Lemmy (Voyager on iOS, dreaming of an eventual complete migration)
Instagram -> Pixelfed
Facebook -> stopped using
Windows 11 -> Ubuntu (Only personal laptop, work laptop still windows)
Don't put all your eggs in one basket (dont use proton for everything)
I usually tell people the same, this is a decision I will have to live with. I am happy with Proton and also happy to support their growth, hopefully it will go well for a long time.
From the other services I tried, Filen and Ente deserve an honorable mention. I was close to just go Mail Plus + Filen + Ente. But as soon as you do Proton Mail + VPN, you then go with Proton Unlimited and that is what makes the most sense financially.
I recommed Tuta for mails. May be not good as Proton but not American, not from Google and most important, private as Proton.
I love Tuta as well, they are great. But not being able to use Tuta with thunderbird was a deal breaker for me. Proton is Swiss btw.
Yeah I know Proton isnt American. Just wanted to remind Tuta's situation. Yes, lack of another client is really bad but I enjoy the official app, we may differ at that point.
If you are willing to break from Proton email like I did, I think mailbox.org + Anonaddy.io + Thunderbirds has been pretty good for me. I still do use Proton VPN though.
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I don't understand your point, if data will be exposed at some point, why would you want that exposure with 2 separate companies instead of one?
Nice, now de-Apple it
And then de-Proton it.
an imperfect ally is not an enemy
This right bloody here, you have to make sacrifices for peace-of-mind otherwise you’ll live your life paranoid on the smallest of things.
One persons opinions don’t suddenly make a service unusable or unreliable.
This is my thing. I've ditched all of proton for the obvious reason, but aside from that, I no longer want everything under one umbrella. Convenience has shown it comes at too great of a cost
I was just about to pay for their service, started a new LLC so that was gonna be a good excuse to start supporting them and then his CEO shows his true colors.
I have been happily supporting Tuta instead. Is a bit slow but the aliases and emails work great.
Did the CEO do anything to bother you other than tweet that Slater was a good appointment by Trump? If not, can you explain what the problem is with Slater as a nominee?
When the CEOs political preferences get lousy enough or attracted as the necessary amount of attention to make it to a headline, some customers will turn away.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the thing that bothers you about the CEO is that other people are annoyed by the CEO's tweet?
Edit: honestly I don't even understand what's politically problematic about his tweet. One of the few ways we can encourage the Dems to improve is by voicing our approval on when the GOP actually does something right.
I wonder how worrying about how others spend their money benefits you.
Edit: also not everyone in the world is American. Not everyone in the world sees the politics as a war of black vs white like you do of the 'Dems' vs the 'backWards'
Yes but it can also give you extra cost. Bundled services cost less than individual ones. For example Proton offers better value with their email and cloud than individual ones.
And then de-Smart it.
I wish there wasn't a thing such as a 2G 3G shutdown so I can keep using a phone that needs to be charged weekly.
which of these are apple?
The iPhone
OH I misread the title. Of course hahah
As predicted, here come all the purity tests.
I know there's no way to definitively prove it, but in my mind Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google. I know you can do custom roms and all that, but let's face it: It's a huge pain in the ass. I know, I know, "It's not really"... I beg to differ. I went through my purity phase with degoogled roms and all that. Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of "normal" apps, I gave up and went with an iPhone. Apple's business model is to sell you the thing at a higher price, thus reducing the incentive to sell your data or enshittify. Yes, that will degrade over time and I'll reach a threshold at which I'll reevaluate my options. Given the two major choices, I choose the less terrible ecosystem of the two.
I refuse to have any Google or Meta products on my iPhone. I know that makes me lame here, but we should also understand that any normie would never go to all the trouble of OS tinkering. The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing. Criticizing a person's degoogle effort as "not good enough" does nothing but drive people directly into the arms of the very evil we wish to diminish. This is a community to banish Google, not everything backed by a for-profit corporation.
You know our lawmakers have failed when you have to be this concerned about privacy on your own behalf.
it's really shouldn't be this much effort in order to retain your data and I know the argument can be made that you just use services that respect it but without legislation it's incentivized to monetize data which makes it extremely hard to find alternatives that don't.
Agreed; unfortunately, this will always happen as long as money is allowed in politics.
Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to the authors of this paper when they reached out for comment (unlike Google which did reply).
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
iOS is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.
Sounds like you haven't tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google Play Services. Neither of these are issues for me and I've been using it for years after switching from iOS.
Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser. If you can read, you can install GrapheneOS with minimal effort.
My personal choices are slightly different than yours, but I appreciate your comment. You’re clearly an ally while not being a clone. I often tire of discussions about security and privacy—mainly because I am very pragmatic.
Unlike OP I don’t use Proton’s suite, but considered it. Most of what I want Apple provides (Advanced Data Protection, Private Relay, etc) in a form that meets my minimum requirements. Other things that I use (Signal especially) are well-supported on iPhone.
I’ll talk down Apple all day long in the correct context, but I still believe it is a good choice today. I may re-evaluate at some point in the future when the landscape or my needs change. For now I am very happy.
This sub is strangely pro Google
Apple already proved they'll roll over for the EU on encryption backdoors.
If it comes down to them selling in the US or not selling in the US, they're going to roll over and do whatever the government demands.
They're all so holding all of your data, metrics, and browsing habits securely in their hands.
When the government demands baggacips data, they're going to hand it over, the same as Google would.
And none of this is ever a problem until the government goes kind of fascist. When browsing privacy subs on Lemmy becomes an act of treason...
Even if I'm not doing anything wrong or illegal, I sure as hell I'm not going to send my data through a VPN that logs and is known to comply with foreign court requests.
You can in fact drive yourself insane trying to stay private and secure, But I do know that trusting a single gigantic monolithic company that operates in a questionable regime to protect you from government entities is a losing battle.
Did they? They explicitly made a big deal about not doing that for the UK government's request.
They said they would remove all encryption rather than installing a backdoor.
It's good that this attracted some attention, but they still agreed to removed all the protections the UK requested.
I don't know about the ROMs being a pain in the ass. I did a test run of putting LineageOS on my old Motorola and using adb sucked a little, but once I got it working, it had no issues. I did that so I would know what I was doing for the real purpose of putting GrapheneOS on my Pixel 8a, and they literally had a button on the website that worked like a dream (but only on chromium browser...) and did the process in about 20 mins top. Been using it for almost a year now.
The only issue I've had was Google Messages RCS and banking apps. I can live without the wallet and banking apps, and even then, some banking apps work anyway lol (super long GitHub report list about them). RCS was frustrating, but I think it was caused by not deregistering my number from my old iPhone, as it hasn't conked out again.
I really don't get what wouldn't work outside of that. Maybe it's been a while since you tried android ROMS. Wish I had one as good and debated as GrapheneOS for my Galaxy Tab I just got, but it's so new that there's nothing but a GSI for it...
I think your whole post supported my point….
I mean, sure. I'm just saying the lack of Wallet and banking apps is not a killer, and I don't see what makes ROMS hard, especially GrapheneOS. Sorry.
I just hated using iPhone so much, since I couldn't put what I wanted on it and they treat you like a toddler.
Well pick it back up and take it with you, because this issue has nothing to do with privacy. All major vendors take advantage of evil shit to produce their goods.
Apple is by FAR the worst when it comes to this stuff
I want to use Signal but can’t convince everyone to get on it
The US DoD uses it
And they hand out invitations to group chats
Is that a good or bad? Could go both ways 🤭
Matrix/element doesn't make you give out a phone #
That's not why most people aren't on Signal.
Neither do signal anymore i think
Them dropping sms took away a big carrot for adoption though.
They absolutely do, but you can hide that behind a username after you've registered now. But you still have to come up with a number to register a new account.
Ah perfect thabks for the clarity, yes it was the username introduction that confused me - didnt realise it was both.
Nope, they still require a number.
From their site:
There are options to spoof a number in the States, and probably some areas of th EU, but many other places are SOL.
Still miss that feature everytime I get an SMS or have to send an sms if data isn't working.
Yes, but iOS is even more closed than Android which makes all iPhones a small prison for open-minded and privacy oriented people.
Google is Big Tech, logs everything. Apple is Big Tech too, but only logs tiny less than Google. All Big Tech is a big no-no if you're privacy oriented. This applies to all services that uses Big Tech, too.
Here's my response to the -2 votes or whatever it is called. I bet it's because of the last sentence. If you surf a website with a browser with uBlock Origin and blocks Big Tech, that's good. But a lot of people visits websites and allows everything, feeding Big Tech with even more data than they already have. That was why I wrote it is a big no-no even services that uses Big Tech. Signal included.
Very good. Next step should be the iPhone
A linux phone is on my list, Jolla or similar. One battle at a time.
I recommed Pixel phones with GrapheneOS or any Lineage OS supporting device. Linux phones are good but I dont personally think they are reliable as smartphone.
Maybe not, but buying them will improve future Linux phones.
Buying a google phone just feels dirty, all this talk about privacy and foss but then still filling Google's pocket is something we need to move away from as privacy/foss enthusiasts.
Actually, you are right. But IMO, only donating is better for Linux phones. Sailfish OS from Jolla has some problems according to people bought the phone. And other companies are not enough now. Its better not to use smartphone nowadays.
I'd wish, but I my country u have official goverment ID apps that you need for taxes and stuff. Banking, work and school all often require phones. Not using a smartphone is just not feasible for many people, so might as well encourage alt phones like Linux
In Türkiye, we have same things too. My solution is to have a phone ONLY for that actions. No any other apps. Happy with it.
Yeh, I’ve got a second hand iPhone at the minute, but swapping shitty big tech for shitty big tech feels stupid.
Yeah, Linux phones might not be ready yet and it will mean compromises and workarounds. Will be following closely the development of not Google not Apple phones, before pulling the trigger.
Apart from GrapheneOS, all other android ROMs are less degoogled than you think, as confirmed by many security researchers. For less techy people the order to degoogle is:
Yes, Custom ROMs as OOTB may not be enough. But with root privileges, hardening and debloating solutions, it can be better than iPhones and other options. iPhone will be less “Googled” because it is not Google's product, but Android is a Google product. So it is possible to label Android as completely “Googled”. However, if we talk about privacy concerns, there are Google services within Android that we can categorize as core and malicious. We can remove the harmful ones as needed, but the iPhone remains a privacy nightmare no matter how few Google products it has. I don't think the only criterion that defines a secure and private phone is how deGoogled it is. My personal decision is to use any free custom ROM with hardening and debloating.
Fully agree. Just not sure how much benefit a debloated Custom ROM is vs. a debloated stock Android (let alone oneUI etc). GrapheneOS seems to be the only good way to go.
Apple is a horrible company, for privacy and otherwise, and should be avoided at all costs. And their OS isn't open source, why trust it?
I might be expressed myself wrong. Because of my poor English😅 I mean, the last step to change is the iPhone. To the Android alternatives with custom OS. Especially Google Pixel phones with GrapheneOS.
Ohhh, I didn't notice that's an iPhone. Thanks for the explanation, your English is fine, I'm just a bit silly :3
How ironic that the ultimate degoogling involves buying a Google Pixel phone! I’d rather go Fairphone with LineageOS.
DeepL with PWA or browser shortcut is the way for me. LibreTranslate keeps bugging.
fuck yeah mate
How you liking Voyager? I’m bouncing between Arctic and Thunder atm, one day I’ll find the perfect lemmy client.
Mlem is competent, but isn’t especially good at anything, and lacks some features the others offer
After coming from Apollo and Reddit, at first I was just unhappy that the clients were not great. Once I moved past my grief state I realized Voyager was good enough. I’ve stopped re-evaluating (though I’m sure I will again at some point) and just appreciate what I have.
(Not OP)
At the moment I use both mlem and voyager. Personally I find that everyday browsing is a nicer experience using mlem, especially since their recent-ish 2.0 update. Though it's missing many of the fancier features that voyager has (eg drafting posts). The user tagging voyager has is super useful too.
I have not tried other clients. I am quite happy with Voyager, but maybe I will give the others a shot :)
Saving this post. I have been deGoogling as much as I can but havent done the research to find some of these options. Thanks
Is there anything particular about Notesnook that Anytype doesn’t offer?
Probably not, but I really like Notesnook for its simplicity and just organize notes in folders. Anytype is awesome for more complex stuff, I usually use it for work, kanban boards and such.
That’s fair, I guess there can be a little extra effort in folder/grouping in Anytype and having certain apps that are built for a purpose à la The Fediverse 😄
or Joplin?
Check out kagi translate
Is it paid
It is not. It is probably the only thing aside from Orion browser, that Kagi offers for free.
I have used it in the past to test its accuracy, and it neither asked me to log in nor pay.
Next step is to de-Apple your Iphone.
Fuck that, next step is linux 🚀
Voyager is great but you should give Mlem a shot!
Am I only one who doesn't like proton services?
For some reasons, I don't get the OTP emails in proton mail. Just the OTP emails..
What's unwatched?
YouTube player app. Open source, no ads, no login, just import your subscriptions and playlists and you're ready to go.
Try Impressia for PixelFed
I feel like my story is a lot similar to yours almost a year ago now I saw a YouTube video about degoogling. It caused me to switch to Firefox with betterfox on the betterfox github pages there was a new oil link which I read and followed ultimately leading me to all of this and so much more.
Wow, thenewoil website is great. Thanks for sharing.
Hmm people keep talking about qwant I wonder what it's like...
lol wtf
I too long for when communities (Indian and some niche ones) have more activity on Lemmy. They exist here, but have no activity after their creation. Until things pick up, I continue to access Reddit on iOS using SinkIt.
Thank you for sharing about Unwatched. It fills the void in iOS that Tubular fills perfectly in Android.
::: spoiler P.S. I am not entirely sure why, but I remember seeing Unwatched’s creator @[email protected]/@[email protected] quite often back when Lemmy iOS apps were starting off (Mlem, Memmy, WefWef, etc.) in the fall of 2023, perhaps he was a major contributor or creator of such apps. :::
I didn’t know about sink it, will have a look! I currently use hydra to access Reddit on iOS.
Saved! Good work and thank you.
Why did you move away from NordVPN? What’s wrong with them?
They also had a data breach a few years ago, and there was a thing about them cooperating with police to disclose information two years ago that got many people in a tizzy. Of course, any VPN provider will be bound by the laws where they operate. But different folks felt uncomfortable with their perceived willingness, and what exactly they may be sharing.
I just give preference to open source apps.
So you start with an iPhone....
Why don't you put an edgy sticker on it?
Gotta start with what you have 🤷
Somehow I think you may have had a choice about what phone you buy.
I have had the same phone for the past 3 years, so the degoogle process started a couple of years after I got it.
De-Google but using an Apple. Yeah, Apple is soooo much better than Google 😂
As I mentioned in other comments, I didn’t buy a new phone to degoogle. I’m sure there are more people on the same boat. And this is a degoogle group.
After experiencing the iPhone 3 and MacBook pro 2009 I knew I'd never want to give Apple my money anymore. Boy did they try to scam me. "Broken hard drive? (500gb non-SSD) Sure, well fix it! 600 euros!" I'll never sell my soul to Apple anymore.
Imagine spending 1k USD and then Not using any what you paid for lmao
Wdym? 😭
I see Proton and Bluesky. Appreciable effort, but it can be done better.
I mean, it the end it’s all up to personal preferences. I’m strongly considering to delete Bluesky due to the latest controversy. But would you care to elaborate?
Not many people have resources to set up a mastadon instance and I don't think bluesky can be connected using activitypub but I'm not sure about that.
Proton's ceo has recently made some Trump sympathizer statements but honestly, I'll still keep my subscription because of how cheap they are for me.
I didn't like the statements regarding Trump either, but he deleted it and made some comment/post on reddit distancing himself from Trump and right wing politics. So I made peace with that, but yeah, people won't forget.
Not sure why people care so much, the individual can think whatever he wants, it hasn't stopped proton from continuing on its good path (even though I don't use them much nowadays, they are a great service with a respectable free tier).
Trust in a product can be weaponized.
Also, as a Roman, I would never trust a Swiss. Call it genetic memory.
EDIT: apparently Proton was once more useful, this time to Musk.
This is completely expected. Often, people recommend tuta as an alternative. Tuta implement as requested by a court a monitoring functionality (link) that was effectively a backdoor for specific users.
There is no company that can protect against government authority. Just thinking that is silly.
And as a roman, Germans shouldn't be more trustworthy...but then, who is left?
This is their official comment on this on Reddit:
So yeah, not the same. In Proton's case they had (and I can accept that they are required to have, under Swiss law) records that they previously stated were not there.
Also, Germans don't take their pride in being part of a century-old mercenary guard. They have distanced themselves from much more recent military corps.
That article is stupid. Any company that receives a "legally binding order" has to comply with it.. what would you expect?
Most companies aren't going to commit a crime to protect a user (like that one dude who ran an email service and destroyed it when he was required to hand over data, forgot his name!!!!). If they did, they'd be out of business...
(The article isn't exactly dumb, but it doesn't address this properly in my opinion. The outrage over it seems dumb to me. The government will force companies to do whatever it wants, be mad at the gov not the corpo in this case when its to apprehend a journalist or whatever.. i understand if its a terrorist or similar, but this specific case may be more poopy om the gov behalf)
If you had nothing, as you said you would have, you would have nothing to provide to the authorities.
This is exactly what happened with Mullvad: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692580/mullvad-vpn-raid-sweden-police
I know that this may be a requirement in Switzerland, that is why I would not use a Swiss product in the first place.