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Gugl-free

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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Danielsan
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Gugl-free

#1 Post by Danielsan »

TL;DR
I am trying to use as email and social network only ethical platform that respect your digital life
Working in a marketing department I am aware about that all these social/email stuff are just marketing platforms disguised so I decided to put a part my laziness and starting to explore alternative, and more ethical, solutions. The aim is trying to be Gugl-free and living in peace with myself and the others...

Unfortunately you can't get rid off of it totally but you can mitigate its presence, at least until Pursim doesn't decide to release a phone cheaper, my biggest concerns are Gimeil and Giplas, the former has been my current email for a while and the latter has been my favorite source of info since the moment I stopped to use rss feed (I don't why but at a certain point Liferea became to be an hog memory doing my old PC unusable and I stopped to use it).

Found an email that respects your privacy it is not easy but either complicated because: https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

I was undecided between Posteo.net and Autistici/Inventati (A/I) (Kolab it is really expansive), eventually even if A/I is provided for free I opted for Posteo.net, the main reason was because the Italian domain is a pain in the heck if you live and work in the US, Posteo it easier to spelling and easy to understand.

I understood that a free service is unrealistic without at least a donation, companies like Gugl provides service for free because they make money with your "big data", this might make sense if it was like a fair barter, but a barter must be balanced between the parts and with this IT companies it isn't. With Posteo I decided to buy a plan that for 3 euro monthly provided me 10GB of mail box, I believe is quite cheap and absolutely fair. However is not everything so cool... The webmail is fine but without any emails was awfully slow, the risk that after migrating all the emails can be further slow is quite high. Probably the best way to connect to the mail server is through an email client like Thunderbird and K-9 for Android, let's see if I am right!

Regarding the social network platform I realized that there are a lot of good options, GNU Social, Pump, Mastodon and Diaspora*. I found GNU Social very exciting, so much, that I am thinking to open my personal server to share everything with my family as private node, but I didn't elect it as service. I believed that Mastodon was the right choice but I was wrong, the closer to Giplas (but actually is closer to Feisbuk) was Diaspora* so now I opened an account on it. I really liked it, it is not Giplas but I am convinced it will give me the same nice of use. I will probably need to mix rss feed + Diaspora* to receive the same amount of info that I am usually review during the day because Diaspora* is used by fewer people than Giplas, but as usual the key is adaptation.

However I am just starting to test all these changes but I am confident that at end I will confirm my choices! 8)

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debiman
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Re: Gugl-free

#2 Post by debiman »

i have moved away from "The big G" a long time ago.
not completely, in my browsing habits. it is very, very difficult (read: impossible) to browse the www without touching ANY google server.
i still run android (lineageOS to be precise), so that's google, but at least no gapps at all. f-droid provides usable substitutes for everything i need:
osmand~ for maps (full-featured offline use possible)
newpipe for youtube
K-9 mail (superior app)
some open calendar sync thing
afwall+ (that's a firewall) provides a startup script to use diffrent nameservers (i bet android phones default to google servers otherwise)
VLC for media
etc.

i have quit my gmail account long ago.
i decided to use iki.fi from then on. advantage: i can change email accounts "behind the scenes", but all my contacts continue sending mail to my iki address.
this has proved useful (i also have one of the shortest email addresses imaginable), but has some problems:
when the address "behind the scenes" was autistici's, most mail providers thought i'm a baddie and moved my mail to spam.
only when i changed to posteo.de, this was working reliably.
so that reflects nicely on Danielsan's experience:
Danielsan wrote:I was undecided between Posteo.net and Autistici/Inventati (A/I) (Kolab it is really expansive), eventually even if A/I is provided for free I opted for Posteo.net, the main reason was because the Italian domain is a pain in the heck if you live and work in the US, Posteo it easier to spelling and easy to understand.
Regarding the social network platform I realized that there are a lot of good options, GNU Social, Pump, Mastodon and Diaspora*. I found GNU Social very exciting, so much, that I am thinking to open my personal server to share everything with my family as private node, but I didn't elect it as service. I believed that Mastodon was the right choice but I was wrong, the closer to Giplas (but actually is closer to Feisbuk) was Diaspora* so now I opened an account on it. I really liked it, it is not Giplas but I am convinced it will give me the same nice of use. I will probably need to mix rss feed + Diaspora* to receive the same amount of info that I am usually review during the day because Diaspora* is used by fewer people than Giplas, but as usual the key is adaptation.
i also stopped using facebook completely, and never even started using google's social services (wth is Giplas?).
i always wanted to check out those you mentioned but didn't get around to it yet...

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Re: Gugl-free

#3 Post by kedaha »

Of course it's possible to use other search engines like ixquick and duckduckgo and a very interesting engine is Searx, now available in buster and sid. Host the search engine on your own server.
The ideal alternative to using an advertising-supported email service, I think, is to operate your own email server but for this you need your own domain and static IP. To economise, a good idea would be to to run an email server on a raspberry pi with a setup like this, but I wonder if it might be possible to upgrade from debian-jessie-on-rpi2 to current stable. I used another setup as detailed in another topic.
But I think any email service provided by someone else can give no absolute guarantee of privacy because anyone with root access to the server could, if they wanted to, read other users' emails.
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Re: Gugl-free

#4 Post by None1975 »

kedaha wrote:a very interesting engine is Searx, now available in buster and sid.
Thank you for pointin us tu Searx. Very nice search engine. I already use it.
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Danielsan
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Re: Gugl-free

#5 Post by Danielsan »

Eventually I dumped Posteo for Mailbox.org.

However I already use New Pipe, K-9, Gapps e and generally F-Droid above Play store.

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debiman
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Re: Gugl-free

#6 Post by debiman »

Danielsan wrote:Gapps e
what's that?

and, you actually use the play store? meaning you have a gmail account and are logged in at all times, with your phone? how's that "Gugl-free"?

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