A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy
Rules:
Google maps for navigation in unfamiliar places.
i really want to switch to OSM apps (and I have comaps) but (1) it's not nearly as good at understanding addresses (e.g. "123 first avenue" when it has my gps coords instead of "cityname, First avenue 123 zipcode") and (2) doesn't have nearly as many businesses mapped (e.g. i want to type in "Joe's Restaurant" instead of the address bc i haven't memorized it)
+1, maps is incredible and I wish a proper alternative existed. it's the only thing keeping play services on my phone rn since I don't have time to tinker with sandboxing it
I occasionally need to use Google Maps but I've helped map my area on OSM which improved my experience. Most businesses in my town are now mapped.
Having a phone is a pretty big one.
This is my biggest compromise. The fucker listens to everything I say and do and reports it to thousands of different companies. I wish there was a good privacy focused phone that you could sandbox apps in.
Well as you didn't specify which kind of privacy then.... well if I'm in a high up hotel room with a balcony I like to run out onto it naked and then have a wiggle and quickly run back inside. I call it 'willying the world'
I accept your terms. This will be taken into account as well
Grocery store rewards programs. I know they are designed to link purchases to me, but the financial savings is worth the loss of privacy for me.
Same here. Trouble is, those aren't "savings", the price with the card is now just the price. If you don't have a card, you have to pay an inflated price. A privacy tax, if you will.
Reward programs can link purchases to you through 2 different means:
You cannot technically avoid the second one but I know that most stores don't do that because their systems are separated: one system for the inventory, one system for sending transactions to the banks. I'm telling this because, while they can link your debit/credit card to your purchase, it never happens because it's a major PITA for them and it's a manual process. But it can happen...
In many stores, they will swipe "a store card" for you at the register if you ask them. I believe I've even seen the option on some self-checkout stations. I've only had trouble with this once or twice. But it may be worth risking for the privacy (and monetary) savings.
This works for cases where just being a member gets a lower price, but at least some stores have digital coupons that need to be added to my account. This would not work with a generic card. It is definitely a good tip for stores where it does work though.
I use an old phone number my sister used to have 20 years ago. We have no idea how many people are using that number currently but I get 60 cents off per gallon every month.
the secret is, like Netflix, you’re not supposed to use your own card / number / account – someone in your family / apartment / friends has not only already signed up but also doesn’t care how many take advantage of the savings
I need to take a closer look at this. We don't do it but in these troubled times, young family et cetera... is it worth it?
They can just link purchases to the card I use to pay anyway right?
Having a quick look at my nearest grocery store, it looks like they give me 10% off one shop each month, amongst a plethora of other bullshit perks like points towards fancy cookware or something.
If I shop once a week and spend $200 then that's $20 a month or $240 a year. Essentially one free shop a year.
Not much of a saving really. There's other simpler things I can do to save more money I think.
Using Bitwarden’s cloud service. I don’t trust myself enough to maintain and secure a self-hosted online password vault. Also like others said, google maps. The sheer volume of crowsourced data they have is very useful for real-time navigation especially if you live in a city with heavy traffic.
I've had a Google account since I was old enough to have one. I've been using my email to make so many accounts for years. How does one just move to something else when what yiu already have is so deep into your other stuff?
Gotta do it one by one. It's taken years, but now most of my stuff is off of Gmail. It's to the point where if my Google account got closed, I wouldn't miss much. I wouldn't even lose my emails that I care about since I've done multiple Takeouts.
One step at a time.
Same. I made a new email, and every time i had to log in or something, i looked into changing the email of said account one by one. It wasn't really all that bad
it's a process. by now you're probably using at least one for doing 2 factor authorization with the other. to migrate you have to create a 3rd and go through all your accounts authorizing a login then changing the 2fa account.
I'd say it's probably easier if you have a password manager app, then you can at least let it autofill login info and use it like a checklist to work your way through. Those are obviously their own kind of baggage though
Messaging apps generally. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, you name it. I'd love to move to something like Signal or I'd even do Telegram, or in a perfect world, host my own server storing the messages/media. But the broader population just wants the path of least resistance, so now I have like 5 apps on my phone and all of them are varying degrees of compromised.
I upload to YouTube. I know it gives up a lot of my privacy and I’m sure it’s being fed Into AI… ugh. 😩
I also upload the same videos to other video sites even if they don’t get many views.
I have not yet but may soon be required to give biometrics (fingerprints, possibly eye scan) to my employer.
I haven't decided yet what to do if it comes to that... know I'm giving random tech conglomerates far more in exchange for far less, but this one feels more invasive and personal.
But I'll probably do it if needed. I like this job, and I trust them more than I trust these tech giants I sell my data to, just for a glimpse of the online hellscape.
Why? What’s going on? Isn’t it a breach of some sort?
It's a security clearance thing. But there's also talks of instead easing up on the requirements for different levels of security clearance, so we'll see where it ends up.
Using WhatsApp because in Germany there's no way around it for public contacts.
Edit: I'd love some response on downvote (as always). I use other messengers myself as an avid foss fan and techie and even had it uninstalled a while. That was until I went back to participating in social life and I sure as hell can't get institutions off of WhatsApp as totally frustrating and idiotic as it is for them to use it in the first place.
I'm from Germany and don't have WhatsApp :D But I totally understand what you mean, it's terrible.
I'm a data engineer so I love being able to download data to be able to play with. My biggest one is leaving location tracking on on Google Maps so I can download it and create heatmaps
A car built after 2010 so it's full of cameras and lte connections and gps etc so car companies and the advertisers they sell data to and the governments they backdoor always know what trips I make, how far, how long I stay, etc.
Most of the time, I don't mind a compromise as long as I can keep the data to myself and encrypted, or if the smartphone application can run without any permission.
The biggest threats for me in the above list are PayPal (they know what I buy), and Kagi (they know what I'm looking for). I could find a way to remove Kagi though...
Kagi has no way of knowing what you’re looking for if you use their privacy tokens.
After switching to GrapheneOS on my Pixel and Cachy as my main OS for my PC, the Windows installation I keep for some stuff might be the worst offender, even though I already made it as hardened as possible.
Can you tell me what can't run on cachy? I'm dropping windows in the future and want to know what all I'll lose
Depends what you use, we used to use Sai2 and while it runs in Linux perfectly fine with Wine or WinBoat, its file system is so complicated getting around it’s not worth the hassle. And our cracked Premiere Pro didn’t work on Linux either for obvious Adobe don’t work on Linux reasons, but honestly we switched to Krita for drawing and Kdenlive for video editing and both alternatives were if not the same, better than what we were using before. So realistically it’s just looking at what you use daily, searching if it’s Linux native, if not works with proton/wine/winboat and if all else find an alternative- there’s so many resources it’s pretty easy ti switch now esp if your a gamer (minus any typical kernel anti cheat BS they pull, shouldn’t play those games anywho) if you’d like feel free to reply software you use a lot and we can suggest alts from what we know.
Ps. Don't stress about the distro, there’s no wrong answer (as long as it’s not unbuntu lmao)
Microsoft SwiftKey on my phone. I've been using it since before it was acquired by Microsoft. It is an incredible keyboard and after using it for years, I am very fast on it. I ditched it for about 6 months last year for the FOSS alternative HeliBoard, but it negatively impacted my typing speed so much that I recently gave up and reverted to SwiftKey.
Google Maps also on my phone, because it works really well compared to the alternatives I've tried. I've used (and contributed to) OSM, but it's just not a drop-in replacement for Google Maps yet.
I "verified my identity" on LinkedIn a while back because I'm job hunting.
I can't validate our use of them, but I can at least commiserate. Heliboard was so much slower it wasn't even funny. SwiftKey just knows what I'm trying to say and I can type as lazily as I want. Heliboard had to be nearly perfect to even have a chance of autocorrecting correctly.
Google Maps too, I'm not ready to give it up.
I have Microsoft Teams and Outlook apps installed on my phone because I need them to do my job. I use gmail, google calendar, and google maps because they work and are accessible anywhere I need them. I am certainly aware of the tradeoffs and use more privacy friendly alternatives on my own PC for things I need to do privately. The VPN DNS block lists running on my phone make it so the Microsoft apps barely function as it is.
Carrying a connected cell phone/tracking device
I still use YouTube due to not figuring out how to export my playlists in a way where I can just have a plaintext list of all the videos I want to keep track of. I'm planning on coming up with some kind of Python script to take what I get from their "takeout" method and from there, just find a programmatic way to get what I want. So basically, I allow Google to keep cookies on my system but I use a different Google account on my phone to avoid having them track me on different devices.
I purposely still use Google on one of my PCs. I'm of the opinion that having a limited presence on their algorithms is better than trying to be invisible. So, Google knows I like Magic the Gathering & DnD.
I really think you're right. there's a specific breadcrumb trail I'm trying to give them too. Just kind of don't want my keystrokes to be part of it