youmaynotknow

This is beyond insane. ‘An approved device’. So, my device has to be approved by a fucking company. This is where all this bullshit has led. Companies now get to dictate the life of every person in the world. I’m going to be spending a lot of time away from the internet moving forward. Thank God we have Lemmy.

Fact!

I hope and think so. They’re already way better and faster than Google at patching bugs and vulnerabilities on Android.

That would be amazing.

You still have some time to decide which route to go. If you’re on the free version, stay there, but start looking for alternatives.

Proton Pass is an option. KeePass with Syncthing works great, but it is a dramatically different and more involved workflow.

I am using both, and deleted my Bitwarden account yesterday the moment I heard about this.

Also, I can’t suggest enough that you export all your credentials to an encrypted json file every now and then, and store it on an offline storage device. This is important.

In theory, you’re correct. Smartphones have way more attack surfaces than 'dumb phones’for big tech and other sinister actors to exploit. But ‘dumb phones’ are not clear of this. They are still used by the providers to read your texts and listen in on your calls, plus tracking you based on the towers being used.

It’s not easy to make a choice. If you have a smartphone with stock firmware, your whole life is being tracked, if you go with GrapheneOS (my case) some of that is minimized by using Signal and VOIP instead of mobile ams and calls. If you go with the dumb-phone, you’re effectively clear from all those tracking methods, but the mobile providers still have a shitload of ways to follow you around together with what you do, when and with whom, but Big Tech is removed from the equation.

Unfortunately, other than not having a portable device of any type with some type of connection, we’re flat out of options, and then that would effectively remove you from society for the most part. What a fucking conundrum.

Thanks. A few months ago I tried going back ro stock pixel, and lasted only 2 days before feeling overwhelmed at the sheer amount of data being transferred and how much they constantly push for you to enable shit you don’t want.

I hope more people can find their way out of big tech. One step at a time, and it can certainly be achieved. And it just keeps getting easier and easier as you go along.

Evidence please.

I honestly believe we all have the power to get to maybe 95% privacy, but it requires effort, time, consistency and willing to change some actions that have become muscle memory.

Trying ro do it all at once was ridiculously overwhelming for me. I deleted all social networks overnight, and plastered a status on my WhatsApp that said “I will delete my WhatsApp account in 90 days. Install Signal of you want to keep texting with me”, and kept counting down the days on that status. I called my close friends and family on the phone, and told each of them what I was doing and why, and some other ‘not-so-close’ acquaintances and relatives that asked me in WhatsApp because of the status asked me and got the same information. When the days hit 0, I just deleted that account.

Removing Google, Microsoft and many others was a way longer run, as I had accumulated too much data in their drives and email services over the years, so that took me almost 3 full years. I started by building an UnRaid NAS, and slowly moving the files over.

With my Gmail, I added QN automatic auto-reply, similar to the countdown on WhatsApp, that said something along the lines of ‘this email address will stop being monitored on xx-xx-xxxx. To continue communication, please reach out to me via Signal, or call me’. Then exported all my email and cleared the full inbox, leaving it at 0 emails. Microsoft was easier, as I only used it for my ISP and my kids’ Minecraft account.

I opened 2 different accounts on different email providers (tuta, proton, etc) and started using those instead, created a permanent forward on gmail to 1 of the accounts, and started monitoring what was coming in, and sending all the garbage I didn’t want to spam in the new services. The other account on each service would be the ones I planned kn using permanently when I had finally chosen which one to keep.

This is only part of the road, going private after years of choosing convenience is not easy, and if you want as little disruption as possible and want to minimize loss of data, it’s a long journey.

However, the benefit of dropping all that garbage from my life, and dare I say, the people this has removed from my life, has been the dramatic improvement to my mental health. And of course, its incredible how much I learned along the way, and how Much I keep on learning.

One more benefit that wasn’t immediately evident was the type of people I now interact with in the internet. It used to be all the gossip, the ‘look at what my dumb kid does’, and other honestly irrelevant shit for me. Now, I interact with people that I consider to be some of the smartes individuals alive on Lemmy and even Mastodon. Sure, there’s still a shitload of imbeciles too, but the numbers pale in comparison to the number of people with common sense and that are looking to learn more, as well as help me and others learn, and have the capacity to have civilized (some times 🤣) discussions to figure out new ways together to increasingly better solutiona, while also warning others of some new dangers when they come to light.

All this to say that, it is hard, maybe even painful, but absolutely worth it.

Today my tech infrastructure is basically my steam deck, a System76 laptop running CachyOS, GrapheneOS phone and a server on Proxmox running about 40 services with 20TB of storage to keep my own shit. This backs up weekly to a similar setup at my brother’s house, and I keep an offline backup that I update every 3 months or so.

It’s fun and refreshing, feeling this level of ownership of my data.

I get how difficult it is to just swim against the current. But the reality is that it boils down to choice. I chose to allow whomever wasn’t willing to help me achieve my privacy just fade away from my life if that’s what it took. However, I don’t condemn anyone that hasn’t made that choice, because I know how hard it is to make it and stand your ground.

I didn’t always have the understanding of what I was giving up, but the signs were there so I chose to dig deeper. Fast forward 10 years, my mental health is the envy of many people because I chose to not care if people removed me from their lives for refusing to use the same services they do.

Having said that, we all have a choice to make. So, I disagree with that comment that it’s now everyone’s problem '. It certainly isn’t my problem. There are those that have chosen to add what I use to their arsenal of services, others that flat out switched to them, and then there are those that, likee, refused to use other services (like Signal and SimpleX) and I’m very happy with the decisions each of them made.

Why use RCS at all? Because of other people? I ask because I had that dilema at some point, and decided I cared more about my privacy than someone else’s convenience. So, if they want to talk to me, use Signal or SimpleX, otherwise, call me and we can meet somewhere.

Wao!

You are literally pushing Google here. This is about de-googling. Think about it, it may save you some day.

This. For taking distros for a quick spin, boxes is the way to go.

Micro, for muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts from when I was a mostly GUI user.

You’re finally getting it. Good.

Calling others on their bullshit does not equal hating on them. Why do you think CalyxOS had to ‘take a break’? Why do you think that The only thing these ‘privacy’ focused OSs can do about GrapheneOS is say it’s geared towards criminals? They have no other way to try and smear them because they’re all garbage in comparison.

Get your shit straight. GrapheneOS is so fucking awesome that they plugged an actual Linux kernel hole within hours of it being found, whereas it took Google weeks, never mind these Murena and Calyx morons.

It is actually verified e2ee. However, they do keep a ‘spare key’ for every single user and chat, you know, in case they need to help you, the good guys at Meta.