Untrack Yourself - basic privacy guide

This post is highly inspired from “The Social Dilemma”

• “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke (see)

• “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” — Edward Tufte

• “We’re training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or lonely or uncertain or afraid we have a digital pacifier for ourselves that is kind of atrophying our own ability to deal with that.” — Tristan Harris

• “Imagine for a second, if Wikipedia said, ‘We’re gonna give each person a different customized definition, and we’re gonna be paid by advertisers for that.’ Then Wiki would study you, and change the entry. That’s exactly what’s happening on Facebook/ Youtube feed/ Google search results.” — Jaron Lanier

• “Is this the last generation of people that are gonna know what it was like before this illusion took place? Like, how do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you’re in the matrix?” — Tristan Harris (see)

• “We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive, in a world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way and cooperations go unregulated they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet, and we know that it’s going to leave a worse world for future generations. Now we’re the tree, we’re the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time starting at a screen, staring at an ad.” — Justin Rosenstein

:exclamation: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." — blue_beetle :exclamation:

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Search engine — Google alternatives

• DuckDuckGo - US based
• Qwant - France based
• Swisscows - Switzerland based
• Metager - German
• Yandex - Russian
• SearX - open source
• Mojeek - UK based
• Brave Search - Brave browser based
• Ecosia - save trees
• OneSearch
• WolframAlpha - ask anything

email service — Gmail alternatives

• ProtonMail - Switzerland based
• Mailfence - Belgium based
• Tutanota - German, very very secure
• CTemplar - Island based
• Outlook - not very secure (Microsoft)
• YahooMail - not very secure (Yahoo!)
• Use temporary emails whenever possible

Google meet/ Zoom/ Teams alternatives

• matrix - suggested by Ed Snowden
• Signal
• Telegram
• jitsi meet - open source meeting
• Brave Talk - Brave browser based

Internet browsers - Chrome alternatives

• Mozilla Firefox - only non-chromium based browser + open source
• Brave - chromium based but privacy focussed
• for Android - Via browser, and Firefox Focus
• Iridium - chromium based
• Bromite - chromium based for Android
• Ungoogled Chromium - if you really love Chrome
• Opera and Edge have great features, but with own set of privacy concerns

Cloud service - Drive alternatives

NEVER trust any cloud storage with your sensitive/ massive data. If possible, use external SSD/ pen drive with you to keep your documents and backup manually. If it is really required to access something remotely, you can use following. Remember: “The best cloud and VPN are paid becuase it needs storage space to run.”

• IceDrive - UK based (10 GB with free account)
• Tresorit - Swiss based (3 GB with free account)
• Sync - Canada based (5 GB with free account)
• tCloud - India based (not very good with security)
• Not best, but still better cloud services than G-Drive - One-Drive, Dropbox, Box
• Nextcloud - open-source (self-hosted instances)
• ownCloud - self-hosted instances
• Syncthing - self-hosted cloud

Online office - Google Docs/Sheets/Slides alternatives

• CryptPad - France based (very strong encryption)
• Etherpad - self-hosted
• Cryptee - Estonia based (100 MB free docs)
• Aspose - not much feature rich, but might come handy
• LibreOffice - offline, but best alternative to MS Office
• OpenOffice - offline, not feaure rich
• MS Office online - Not best, but still better cloud services than G-Drive

Google/ Apple maps alternatives

• Open Street Maps
• Here WeGo - ad supported
• Bing Maps - not much secure, but feature rich

Miscellaneous alternatives

• Youtube alternatives — Invidious instances are best - GitHub, Piped
• Spotify alternative — Spotfy
• Instagram alternative — Bibliogram - sourcehut, some more instances
• Twitter alternative — Nitter, some more instances
• Medium alternative — Scribe - sourcehut
• Reddit alternative — teddit - codeberg
• Wikipedia alternative — Wikiless - codeberg
• Google photos alternatives — Piwigo, Lychee and Photoprism (all self hosted)
• Google translate alternatives — DeepL, and Linguiee (but works well only for European languages)
• Windows/ Andriod/ ChromeOS/ MacOS/ iOS alternatives — Linux is arguably the best alternative for desktop, and Sailfish OS is the most beautiful mobile OS. Lineage OS is also good if you love Android.
• Google forms alternatives — Jot form
• Google Keep/ Evernote/ Microsoft notes alternatives — Standard notes and QOwnNotes
• Google fonts (for websites) — Font Squirrel

Extra : :thumbsup: Visit Substack and Medium for excellent articles, read this by Edward Snowden for example: Apophenia: How the Internet Transforms the Individual into a Conspiracy of One