9mo ago

How (and why) to de-Google your life and protect your privacy | Proton

proton.me How (and why) to de-Google your life and protect your privacy | Proton

Google is one of the biggest obstacles to privacy. This article will explore how and why to de-Google yourself to reclaim and protect your digital privacy.

Google is one of the biggest obstacles to privacy. This article will explore how and why to de-Google yourself to reclaim and protect your digital privacy.

35 comments

Basically an advertisement for their services, but since they're shitting on Google's ad revenue model I'm all for it.
I will not shit on Google completely myself though, because I do appreciate (other than a few naughty shenanigans they've pulled recently) their work on the Android kernel.
- Completely self serving though. Mobile is a personal data goldmine and Google gotta dig into that one way or another and if folks can contribute to that side with bug fixes, great.
- And Facebook has some of the best open source work of all time, from the react ecosystem to making php feasible, to LLMs. There's certainly a ton missing and a lot of it is for their own products, but some of it goes far beyond their own needs
  Facebook also did unethical human testing and debatably broke democracy and the social fabric
  Just be even handed. Praise the good, denounce the bad, and keep in mind these are monstrously large companies and the people that did the good probably have little to do with the ones that did the bad
  Google shouldn't get a pass because they bought Android and only partially used that ownership to control the ecosystem and push their own products
- This is honestly what puts me off using Proton. They advertise way too much and way too aggressively. It's just a bad vibe for a company that's trying to set itself up as an alternative to Google.
  I use Tutanota but I'm looking to find something else because I'm sick of platforms that lock you into their ecosystem, and the fact they don't provide any means of using other mail clients like Thunderbird has become a deal breaker.
  Problem is there doesn't seem to be consensus on third place.
  
  They advertise way too much and way too aggressively.
  I understand your feeling, but I think massive advertising is needed. This is high level marketing, basically telling the general public there is another way other than big tech. Most people don't know this to know there are options to choose...so they don't.

This is just a long advertisement
- It’s their company blog.
- Oh absolutely, it's just an ad for Proton products. That doesn't make the point about degoogling any less relevant.
  What are the alternatives though? Self-hosting an email server is practically impossible because spam detection will block you on every turn.
- Just wait until you start using Proton mail. Damn thing spams your inbox with so many of its own services and offers
  
  You can turn off all of those emails. At least I can, but I pay for it. There's like 3-5 toggles in settings to select what communications I would like to receive from Proton.
  
  Is that free plan? I'm on paid and don't see any advertising from them.

any service that grows enough will become a google there is no way around it. I cant imagine a situation where half the world uses an email server and governments dont fall on it
- There is no reason other than greed that tech companies have to have their fingers in so many pies. Regulators could split Google up - search separated from ads and separated from other services.
  It's not the size so much as the breadth of it's influence. We've gotten used to the idea that tech companies like Google and Microsoft do everything. But they're only doing everything so they can get at every bite of our data. An email service doesn't need to be run alongside a search engine or a news aggregator or an ad company. And certainly doesn't need integration between all those things.
  
  Doesn't need to be as wide coverage as Google. If you only provide email service and half the population of US population is using your service, the government will come after you and ask for unlimited access to people's emails. That is already quite a lot of data. But agreed when you are like google, you basically have every piece of knowledge required to completely map someone's life. Fucked up shit.

I'm all for anything that can replace Google

This is a good thing, but it is too much advertising proton's services
- Proton is CIA and basically modern Crypto AG. https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/
  The CIA-funded companies are quite easy to spot since they publically support US-backed coups out of nowhere seemingly for no reason.
  Edit: here's an example. Notepad++ has a version named "Stand with Hong Kong". They were later found to have a CIA backdoor in one of their DLLs.
  Proton also openly supported the HK riots, which were US backed. https://youtu.be/XoyGc41wcwc
  They (Proton) are a Taiwanese company and raising money for HK riots and blogging about supporting them is extremely uncharacteristic of one. They are not willing to stick their necks out like that. They're ultra conservative when it comes to PR and marketing.
  In fact, I dare anyone here to find any other Taiwanese company that did/does such a thing.
  
  A differing view for the interest of making people decide for themselves https://brian.carnell.com/articles/2021/the-truth-about-the-truth-about-protonmail/
  
  Nowhere did you provide actual proof but you sure are confident you’re right lmao
  I got the largest fuckin bridge to sell ya

You can use the Google Play store anonymously with the Aurora Store.
Other than that, you can probably find free and open sources alternatives instead of using Proton.

it's not technically self hosting (and i don't really want to do that) but i've had my own domains since the last 90s and dreamhost since 2007 and i don't even need gmail or another email service. it's nice.

I'd like to drop this amazing blog here: https://digdeeper.club/articles/email.xhtml#protonmail
- Thanks for the info

I've been trying to, and it would be easy enough with individual users having an @gmail account. My situation is ten people on a custom domain (anyone remember "Google apps for your domain"?) and that is particularly difficult to extricate from!
- You can easily migrate custom domain that to proton for email, calendar, and drive. What you'll struggle with is docs and sheets.

You can also buy a domain name and get cheap email hosting. Less annoying than what I hear proton is. My hosting uses Titan Mail, they'll occasionally pop up about a new thing they're working on but I can just be like "no thanks" and they go "cool."
- I've been using proton for several years and have not found it annoying.
  Not sure what you've heard is annoying.

10 years later: De-Proton your life.
- 100%. They'll eventually turn evil. I self-host as much as I can.

35 comments