DeGoogle Yourself

Thanks for your help in my last thread! I was looking at Thomson box which I think is called Onn in the US. It says it has built in chromecast so is it not degoogling?

I have zero tech abilities so I have no clue

Slowly but surely trying to de google my life, but Google Photos is a hard one. I have a kid and seven pets, and I've come to rely on Google Photo's search abilities to actually find anything I want to see in the hot mess of disorganized photos.

I tried a trial of Ente and filled it up to the free limit with pics. It was able to recognize my toddler in THREE photos, no one else. I don't know how many or which photos are backed up because it doesn't seem to show them separate from my un-backed up ones. It doesn't learn to recognize pets as far as I can tell.

I'm too tired to learn to self host just to use Immich, even though I've heard good things, ha.

Is it time to start an Infomaniak community on Lemmy to post news and Q&A?

I’ve recently picked Infomaniak for my buyeuropean/degoogling process and I think it’s pretty great, but the online dicussion is really limited compared to Proton or Tuta.

I'm new to this idea and a Google girl so I'm interested in learning more. I'm not good with tech, but if it's necessary I'll do it as much as I can.

Crossposted from https://programming.dev/post/29115507

On February 11, 2025, Blue Shield discovered that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a way that allowed certain member data to be shared with Google’s advertising product, Google Ads, that likely included protected health information. Google may have used this data to conduct focused ad campaigns back to those individual members.

Blue Shield severed the connection between Google Analytics and Google Ads on its websites in January 2024.

What information was involved

• Insurance plan name, type and group number;
• city;
• zip code;
• gender;
• family size;
• Blue Shield assigned identifiers for members’ online accounts;
• medical claim service date and service provider, patient name, and patient financial responsibility;
• “Find a Doctor” search criteria and results (location, plan name and type, provider name and type).

I need one to get the 10GB extra :)

Here is mine: TIZUY7

This is pretty much a. Follow up to my post yesterday and was wondering which search engine to use, I’m leaning stlightly towards mullvad as it is a more reputable and they get their results exclusively from braves index but 4get is open source and has an official instance.

I recently bought an HMD Skyline because it is supposed to be a European brand and I tried to degoogle it as far as possible. I am not logged in on my Google account and use alternatives for all applicable apps.

Fact is, that some Google services are impossible to get rid of, such as file manager, photos etc...

Besides this the HMD Skyline's software really sucks. It constantly crashes or my navigation bar stops working. Throwing it out feels like a step too far as it is a relatively new phone and it is just creating more e-waste.

To hopefully strike two birds with 1 stone, I would like to install a custom non-google-ROM.

I believe the bootloader for the HMD skyline is unlockable these days, so that would remove the first obstacle. But my question is: are there any custom ROMs available for the Skyline? And to make the question a bit broader: can any device be flashed with a custom ROM or should a ROM be developed specifically per device type?

Any insights are appreciated!

I'd like to hear of an alternative to google calendar. I just need a calendar-based event tracker that is able to sync between at least my phone (android) and PC (Linux). Are there any alternative services? (other than Outlook)

🔍 Google Search

1. Leta  
2. 4get
3. Searxng
4. Kagi

📧 Gmail

1. ProtonMail  
2. Tutanota  
3. Mailbox  

🌐 Chrome

1. Librewolf
2. Brave Browser
3. Mullvad Browser  
4. Vivaldi - partially open source
5. Floorp

📱 Android Custrom ROMS

1. GrapheneOS
2. Calyx 3. /e/OS

☁️ Google Drive

1. Nextcloud (self hosted)
2. Filen
3. Syncthing
4. Proton Drive

🗺️ Google Maps

1. OSMAnd
2. Mapy
3. Organic Maps

📝 Google Docs / Sheets / Slides

1. CryptPad
2. LibreOffice
3. OnlyOffice
4. Collabra

📺 YouTube

1. PeerTube
2. Piped
3. Indivious

📸 Google Photos

1. Ente photos
2. Nextcloud Photos
3. Immich

🌐 Google Translate

1. DeepL
2. LibreTranslate

📅 Google Calendar

1. Proton Calendar
2. Nextcloud Calendar (self hosted)
3. Tuta Calendar

📱 Google Play

1. F‑Droid
2. Aurora Store

🎥 Google Meet

1. Jitsi Meet
2. Nextcloud Talk
3. Signal

🔐 Google Authenticator

1. Ente auth
2. andOTP
3. Aegis Authenticator
4. Bitwarden

note: do not use the same provider for password manager and authenticator

🗒️ Google Keep

1. Standard Notes
2. Joplin
3. Notesnook

💬Google Messages

1. Signal
2. Theerma
3. Session

⚙️ChromeOS

1. Linux mint
2. Debian
3. PopOS

🗝️Google Passwords (baked into chrome)

1. Bitwarden
2. KeePass

📚Google books

1. Libby

🎶YouTube Music

1. Qobuz
2. Tidal
3. Deezer

🤖Gemini

1. Duck.ai
2. Le chat (opt out of data sending) - protected by eu privacy laws
3. Ollama (self hosted)

🔍Lens Wip 🚧

💳Google pay Wip 🚧

✔️Google tasks

1. Tasks.org

📰Google news

1. Host your own rss feed reader eg Readrops

🧑‍🏫Google classroom Wip 🚧

🌎Google VPN

1. Mullvad
2. ProtonVPN - free plan
3. IVPN

I am open to any suggestions or to add an services I missed! Suggestions are especially welcome on services with less than three current options

Is so lacking of good options and just wrong sometimes. Like for cloud storage the inly opition is proton mail??? ( not even proton drive) when there is filen and kerogen and others

Google chrome Gmail Google drive ChromeOS Android Google lens Google photos Google docs Google slides

But no proton or libre office. Let’s uncover some hidden gems

I’m stuck with what to choose. I prioritise speed and privacy

I guess i'm doing pros and cons for all of them now:

Startpage Pros - uses google's search results and anonymous view, eu based Cons - Bought my an ad company

Qwant Pros - eu based Cons - lots of ads, sometimes a bug where it is in france

DDG pros - faster than the other two, Cons - https://techrights.org/o/2020/07/02/ddg-privacy-abuser-in-disguise/

glitr.io

hey. im working on a p2p file sharing app as a kind-of alternative to somthing like GDrive or iCloud to transfer files between computers. its far from finished, but ive got enough to put it up for testing and demo purposes. it would be great if you would like to take a look and share feedback.

the aim is for this is to make it easier to transfer files between your own devices.

(my app-description combined with security-claims typically raises eyebrows, so id like to include a link to a related reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/1evdby4/is_this_a_secure_messaging_app)

some pending things to add:

• improved connection stability when over the internet.
• increased file size capacity (currently limited to around 50MB)
• add file-transfer progress indicator (useful for larger payloads).
• update all the documentation to make it less technical.

feel free to reach out for clarity.

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)

I've recently discovered element and revolt as alternatives for discord and Snapchat. We mainly use Snapchat for text chat so not being able to send snaps is not a deal-breaker. It's quite difficult to get people to switch over to something else because they know their current service and "it just works". Snapchat for android is terrible and some of my friends agree so I wouldn't say that "It just works". I need some tips as to how to convince them to switch. Thanks in advance :-)

Hi everyone, so I hear that a lot of are lost in choosing a good search engine apart from the popular ones, but I think I have the solution

The search engine I've been using on all my devices is named "Qwant" its French and of course European. Its private and fast, I've been using it and didn't had any issues with it.

So yes I am also new here on Lemmy and just wanted to be useful.

My beloved Nothing 2a has been ran over by a Camry (true story) and survived?!... but the screen is all messed up and it's more than I paid for the phone to replace it.

Luckily I have have this Moto G Stylus that I basically got for free with my phone plan. I'd like to de-bloat and de-google this thing as much as possible, if it is possible. Is it possible? My go-to LineageOS doesn't seem to have a build for this phone. Any advice is appreciated

For several years I've been using DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search, and I've been overall quite happy with the results. Only rarely had I to resort to Google search (!g).

During the last month or two, however, I've found myself using the !g switch and Google search more than half of the time. DuckDuckGo shows no or few results where Google shows more (and useful) ones.

Still I don't want to give in. So:

• Have you also experienced this worsening of DuckDuckGo?
• Which other more privacy-respecting alternatives do you recommend?