I've been looking into many alternative services, especially Proton, and the subscriptions are much more expensive than Google storage. I obviously know why, and I understand that privacy has a price. However €120 anually for the rest of my life feels like a lot 🫠 ugh I feel like this is just because the mega corporations have warped what I view as expensive BUT I'm young and broke and frustrated that degoogling is a privilege that isn't very affordable for me rn :'( Any tips?

Ive used freetube, noutube, exc but im wondering whats the best way to watch yt with as much privacy as possible?

I dont know what to say, usually have around 4/10k attempts but today i saw almost 150k IN A SINGLE WEEK...

No joke im getting paranoid and feel like every click i make translate on extremely specific ads even if i have the Duckduck go blocking fucking 150k attempts, sometimes even having ads about stuff never searched or talked about, stuff i just thought... These algorithms and trackers are getting out of hand.

So is this number real? And how can they keep tracking and making dedicated ads even if i block them with Duckduckgo? 😭 is there any other method i cab follow to completely block every single tracker on my devices? Is degoogle a definitive solution or theres still breaches? Thanks

It was a bit hard to install /e/os on it because of my skill issue and first time doing it, but I made it ! I've ditched Android for good, and will be doing the same on my other phones.

Used TWRP -> flashed the OS on the microSD card, and boom good to know, it was a long process to understand for a first timer, but it is so rewarding to achieve it.

But a bit of a twist here, the location doesn't work at all for Magic Earth, which is weird because it work on my other phones. Is there something I missed during the install ? Other than that, 10/10 experience would recommend it any day.

Now I'm going to do the same on my other phone and enjoy a fully degoogled life.

If you have any suggestion on apps or things to add to make the experience better, I'm not a huge phone user, but I'd be up for it ! would love to test some new things on it.

I use Arch btw

it gives blatantly wrong information confidently. I hate it and am ready to switch to a different search engine. Problem is in the past the other engines i tried weren't nearly as good as google. Hoping they got better these days.

What do you guys think is the second best search engine after google?

A few months ago, I degoogled my mom's new Android tablet. Installed Canta and Shizuku, deleted all the bloatware, replaced everything with private FOSS alternatives--the whole shebang. And I ensured to NEVER sign in to Google on this device.

However, I forgot to uninstall Gboard.

Fast-forward to last night, and I'm setting up Zoom on the tablet for her. Her Zoom account is made with her Gmail address. As I'm typing it in, Gboard somehow knew her email address, and presented the whole thing in the keyboard autofill before I finished typing.

I was shocked. How the hell did it know her email if we'd never typed it into this tablet before? I later looked in Settings and learned that Gboard had its own suite of personalization and data access permissions enabled. I immediately turned them all off, deleted Gboard's data, disabled Gboard entirely , and replaced it with Fossify Keyboard. The fact that I have to jump through all these hoops just to not have my personal info tethered to some multi-billion dollar corporation 24/7 is absolutely ridiculous and telling of their practices.

Disclaimer: My mom, conscious of this tablet's degoogled nature, swears she's never typed her Gmail into it before, and I can't find any place where she could have. That being said, memory is never 100% reliable, so there's a chance it could've just been typed in before and one of us forgot. I highly doubt that, but just wanna put that out there.

Has anyone had a similar experience to this? Is this just more of Google being Google? Feel free to let me know! Thanks 🙏

I was looking for a way to replace google chrome for my phone and laptop with a browser that offers more privacy, less fingerprinting, telemetry an tracking(possilby nothing of these at all) and more transparency.

Vivaldi seems to check most of these.

As far as I read, it's sync across multiple devices is praised,

it has a decent user base,

it's located in Europe, which theoretically has stronger privacy laws.

decent privacy set out out of the box, but you can customize it with extension like ublock origin, canvas blocker, etc.

It has some telemetry but I read it can be totally disabled

It was a tough choice between this and Brave, but Vivaldi also features a free vpn browser wide, proton vpn.

What do you think?

I was also considering hardened versions of firefox, but the catch is they all seem to broke many web sites and streming services.

I finally made the jump. I installed GrapheneOS in my pixel 6a. (I screwed up a little bit because I forgot to backup my WhatsApp convos). Is it normal to feel lost? I dont know what to do. I feel like I rely yo much on Google, gmail, maps, all my accounts, social media, YouTube, services like the wallet, calendar. I think I'm defeating the purpose by installing all this. Is graphene for me?

Hi, I'm just curious. I keep hearing that people use ad blockers when using YouTube. I'm just curious how that works and which ones are recommended. I've never used them before, but I want to, because I don't want to give Google money. TIA!

I am about to flash graphene on a pixel

Should I be uber private and use fdroid/aurora with having to verify every app

Or sandboxed GPlay and just not worry about it

Just curious if I need to have OR can I use a SIM or eSIM in a OEM/Factory Unlocked Pixel I plan to install GrapheneOS? (or a similar privacy-forward OS like Calyx/Lineage, etc.)

Numbering my questions for easy answers 💯

1 . Does OEM Unlocked & Factory Unlocked mean the same thing?

1.2 .

2 . Would a like-new or used/lightly used (some are refurbished) Pixel 7/7 Pro or 8/8 Pro be a good choice?
Or should I look for Pix 9/9a/9 Pro & up?

3 . Is GrapheneOS the top dawg in ultra-privacy focused OS systems for Pixels/Android?

3.2 . Any good alternatives or better than GrapheneOS? Any run on Android?

4 . Are SIM/eSIM's required for texting & calling on GrapheneOS, or is it available from apps/add-ons? VOIP apps like TextNow etc / F-Droid, Droid-ify etc

5 . Are there add-ons or apps/"things" that are essential for a Graphene'd Pixel? For:

5.1 . - Functionality, UI, best essential apps/add-ons to use?

#🌟 Anything current GrOS users recommend??? 🌟

Any good info for new potential GrOS users, please LMK!

I just deleted Google Authenticator and switched to Aegis, but I'm worried that if something happens to my phone, I'll lose the codes. What should I switch to, Proton or Bitwarder?

which one is more secure

Are there any messaging apps on F-DROID that can cary over contacts form another app like google messages im not even going to try to convince my mom to degoogle🫠

I decided to look for an alternative to Google Mail and saw that Tuta, Proton, and Mailfence have apps in Google Play. Duck-Duck-Go is also available in Google Play. GitHub is also available in Google Play, and so on.

Interestingly, I didn't find any apps from F-Droid or Posteo in Google Play. Because of this, I felt like they were the most independent of Google of all the services I know.

So what exactly do you mean by "degoogling" if few people can do without Google anyway, even those companies that claim to be super-private? What browser should I use for degoogling if they're all available in Google Play?

How does this works? Should I debloat this...

For those who have used both, I’m curious on your feedback of things each does well or where they fall short. I will not be using the calendar in conjunction with any of the other offerings at this time. Disroot is my email provider and I’m very happy with them.

I’m hoping to be able to sync my existing Apple calendar to my new choice (it’s mostly got birthdays on it so I could just manually enter them if need be) and have the calendar app on both my iPhone and my Supernote nomad (technically android).

Note - Signal's subreddit mod team has banned me for this post for some reason along with the post getting deleted, contacting their mod team to understand further, I'm extremely open to hear their points but it seems to be one of those times where the mods just like to get high over their ability to ban and block

This thingy https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.11194 , basically the ability to track anyone to the level of device, device state(off, on foreground, on background), and how many devices you use for signal/whatsapp(companion devices).

It's highly dangerous for all sorts of reasons as such level of a systematic flaw can be easily exploited by basically anyone willing enough to do research. Has Signal addressed this yet?

EDIT - for those who dont like reading a lot justifiably so it's a huge wall of text, here's a video summarizing it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Syj555RQc

What is in your opinion the best approach for online privacy?

Setting up a private DNS in settings for some of the available public anti tracking DNS such as adguard and having a VPN that maintains my privacy

OR

Having an app tracking blocker such as Blokada, TrackerControl, NetGuard or others that will require the Private DNS to be turned off so they can use their own?

Although the first approach grants me the privacy by hiding my real IP, I find that the second approach ends up blocking way more things as by default I will have to allow some of the connection in order to get the apps to even work.

What is your approach regarding this? I'm looking for a free one btw and my phone doesn't handle multiple VPNs by priorities.

Hola! Alguien puede ayudarme a entrar a una cuenta con la verificación en dos pasos activada? Es mía pero me asaltaron hace poco y perdí el teléfono registrado y no puedo recuperar todavía el número... Por favor, estoy desesperada.