the title

This is a great sub, with excellent resources and information. But for many people (the "average Joe" that just about knows how to use Google, e.g. many moms and pops), they will find it hard to escape the grasp Google has over their lives, seeing that it's managed to ingrain itself in every aspect of their digital lives - email, search engine, and even to subscribe to sites and services.

What are the chances that this monopoly Google holds over the common man will be toppled anytime soon? And how might it happen?

i’m currently a Cricket customer, never have been all they happy with it, and the last straw was reading the very restricted list of acceptable 5G phones. I’ve had a phone with Lineage OS before and a Graphene OS phone as well- I’ve decided I definitely want to get a good older phone with plenty of power using some degoogled OS, and this is the closest we have I think to a sub that discusses all the alternatives.

an important requirement is that the processing power is is good and the storage capacity is fairly large because one of the things I’ll be doing with this phone is monitoring our home security app, which is fairly resource-intensive and does not run well on my iPhone 11.

Would anyone have any recommendations for me?

is it a good replacement for gmail and google?

My hopes are low, but maybe someone knows some kind of dark magic.

I want to delete Google Play Store. For multiple reasons:

1. Annoying autoupdating (yes I know about detatch, I have it, but in case it dies this crazy Google bullshit starts it's updating rampage and I have to reinstall all my patched apps again)
2. Literally useless. Aurora store imo has pretty nice UI, reasonable feature set. Not without downsides, but I mostly need any of these two just to install an app that's not available on Droid-ify or a game.
3. Literally useless. A 200MB bloated monster that I never use, because I have Aurora store.

But the huge issue with deleting it is even apps with already purchased things can't detect them and new purchases are impossible.

Is there a way to at least keep apps from forgetting purchased things after uninstalling Play Store? Anything outside of flashing a ROM is a good solution (there's just no custom ROMs for my device, aside from GSIs), like root apps, modules, LSPosed modules or patching (not with creepy Lucky Patcher or other obscure close-source program)

Edit: solution is https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/s/kbmiCnS2FR

Moreover, nobody mentioned that you almost couldn’t play an online game that requires a real time response, not at all. At least, in short, now I know that if you are a mobile gamer, you can’t expect a privacy at the same time.

I got rid of Google search and thought that that would help not to see Google ad everywhere. I was having an issue with a game and I decided to look at my settings because my location was right there in the game ad. What should I see in the app privacy report on my iPad but google ads as the top entity following me around the web. The game apps aren’t permitted to do location based ads but google has gotten around this. How?

I actually started degoogle a while ago. From there I transferred the email to Proton Mail. But I felt that my productivity was worse and my work became more difficult because the Proton eco System was missing many features.

I found that the services provided by Google may be useful to me, and I cannot really find an alternative with their quality and integration with each other.

I think to use Google services only on the web (browsers) and never have any app on my Android phone. Can I use Google for work and [not private] data and continue to use Proton Mail for my personal life, or I have to degoogle 100%?

4get basically works like a "man in the middle" between you and the search engine

You give it a prompt, 4get scrapes the result from Google or other search engines and gives you the results, thus anonymizing all your searches

It supports many search engines, more notably: Google, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Brave and others

People can host their own instances, a list is available at https://4get.ca/instances

For lack of a better way to describe it, any suggestions for an email provider that is slick like a Fastmail but not Fastmail or Proton? I really appreciate how Fastmail is easy and works well but anyone in this group knows their negatives. As far as proton, I have a love hate feeling with them. I just find them clunky and bloated with all the downloads needed and such. Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I want to degoogle my life and started using Startpage. Recently I found out that Startpage seems to be owned an advertising company. Now I'm looking for a new private search engine. Which one do you use?

I'm trying to move away from Google. What's the best private and secure browser that is not Mullvad or Tor? (because they don't save my tabs)

What do you guys use?

I recently started learning about de googling and i realy want to do for a new phone, Im thinking of using lineage os for a poco x6(not the pro) or the f5. I have a couple of friends who would also like to do it and they dont care about specs so i was thinking poco F5 for me and x6 for them any help please.

I didn't download all the data but I assumed it would be in the category Chrome. It isn't. Does it just not exist? But then it should mean that google is not storing our incognito searches anywhere but I believe they are storing them. How to access them? Which category should I choose? I need to remember one search I made that led me to a reddit post answering my question. But I can't.

So now there is a question: does it mean they don't store it actually, am I just not doing it propely, or maybe they store it and not let us get it? Probably would be nice to know.

Sorry if it isn't the right place, I saw many people here talk about google data download so I figured you might know?

Hi!

I randomly discovered this subreddit while on a google-hating rampage and I've been trying to degoogle my life bit by bit. My main issue is that recently I bought a Redmi 12 phone and it is infuriatingly google-based. There are some useless google apps I managed to disable, but others (Google TV, Meet, Photos, Calendar, Google One, Podcasts and Safety) don't give me the option to do it. I don't use them and I do not intend on using them ever. Is there a way someone who has a very basic level of how technology works get around the phone restrictions and get rid of them?

Thanks!

Is there a way to degoogle a Samsung phone, while keeping the Samsung interface and gui, basically the Samsung operating system but without Google or Samsung apps? I don't know if such a thing exists, if it doesn't what is the closest degoogled OS? The OS has to be usable as a tool, an entertainment device (newpipe), and for gaming (e.g. Roblox and Minecraft at minimum).

FYI I use my phone for everything from a tv, to a gaming device, to a personal work device so being usable in all 3 areas is necessary.

Honestly this isn't something I feel like I can go back from. Gmail is so much easier for me to use than the competitors because of the whole "Primary", "Updates" and "Promotions" tabs. They make my email actually usable instead of overwhelming me with things I do not care about or promotions

I would greatly appreciate any alternatives with either similar features or a way to easily set them up. I don't want to spend hours creating shitty filters going into folders after all

I do not mind either webmail or clients, though if it's the latter I'd like it to be available for both Linux and Android

I dont know how many of you saw these articles. I feel these were conscoiuoldy being underamplified by media and also social media algorithms - so that people are not aware of this.

Summary: The small popup windows we offten click 'Accept' or even other 'ok' buttons is ENOUGH for big companies to stop you from prosecuting them for anything - privacy loss, financial loss, even DEATH.

This important aspect - which gives these companies immense freedom to do anything without any future legal repucrusions - is danegrous for us, more so because this vital information is never being allowed to disseminate.

I did not this post this earlier thinking many people might know thise. But I realized I was wrong.

There should be Govt RULES that says TOC should have a Keep it Simple version of around max 30 sentences and max 500 words. It should use simple english and MUST convery all key terms. If there are more terms, those terms should be deleted - because companies cannot expect people to read 5+ pages legal documents in 1 minutes 3 times a day (for different apps etc.)

Latest issue

Uber - September 30. 2024

This meant that they were unable to bring their case to a jury under the seventh amendment of the US Constitution, as they had forfeited their rights.

"How would I ever remotely think that my ability to protect my constitutional rights to a trial would be waived by me ordering food?" said Mrs McGinty.

Disney -  August 14, 2024 

Now, Disney is claiming that Piccolo can’t sue the company because he briefly signed up for a free trial of Disney+, the company’s streaming service, in 2019. Disney+ includes a clause in its terms and conditions that says all legal action must be funneled through forced arbitration—an increasingly common legal tactic that allows companies to avoid facing litigation. The company has claimed that Piccolo also used the My Disney Experience app to buy tickets to the Epcot theme park—a service that sports similar legal language.

(After media backlash disney dropped this argument, but this could have easily been under the carpet since this news was strongly hidden)

References:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/couple-injured-crash-uber-lawsuit-new-jersey-b2620859.html

https://gizmodo.com/disney-says-man-whose-wife-died-at-resort-cant-sue-because-he-had-a-disney-subscription-2000486983

https://preview.redd.it/u7qqus57evrd1.png?width=1356&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4900d853bdfd8cdc40a566c73f3e419240a14ee

https://preview.redd.it/95j1qvidevrd1.png?width=983&format=png&auto=webp&s=6c4ec67eccc8aa0e3dfc609cde8e6f58f53c729f

I don't like the idea that google has access to my emails. I also don't like that they are able to track my location via maps. I can avoid that by using protonmail and using some other map service on my phone (maybe waze or apple maps).

However when it comes to internet browser, why would I bother switching? They can track my internet activity, but all that would show up is IP address, correct? There is no name tied to my internet activity?

According to the "About" paragraph, it's expelling Google from your life. One of the hot topics on here is custom ROMs. But is installing LineageOS, or GrapheneOS, or CalyxOS really expelling Google from your life?

The image is from the home page of the LineageOS website. Note that the term "Android" is used, not once, but twice. And who is responsible for the Android Open Source Project? You guessed it: Google.

There is nothing wrong with creating a more privacy-respecting version of the Android operating system based on the AOSP. In fact, I think it's a great idea, and I truly admire the technical skills of the developers behind these custom ROMs. It's way over my head at the present time.

Since a custom ROM is not available for my Moto G Pure (there's an unofficial version somewhere, but it's dicey), I don't know much about these things. On my Chromebook, someone who calls himself MrChromebox created some custom ROMs which allow me to install Linux on my Chromebook. Pretty cool stuff, yes?

Many users on here install F-Droid, a repository consisting of mostly FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) APKs. And what is an APK? It's an Android Package Kit. So it's still Android-based, and it's not exactly expelling Google from your life.

From F-Droid, you can proceed to install the Aurora Store, which allows you to install numerous apps from the Google Play Store without a Google account. So you're still using apps created for the Android, etc.

A great example of degoogling would be selling your Android and purchasing a Linux phone, like the PinePhone. There are several brands, and I don't own one yet, so I can't tell you much about them.

Another form of degoogling is installing apps for non-Google email services, non-Google document editing and sharing (Cryptpad comes to mind, and I've actually used this service, it's pretty nice), non-Google streaming apps, like NewPipe, and so forth. It's still not expelling Google from your life, but it's more private.

Maybe a better term for this process of creating and using non-Google apps, would be, "Privatizing the Android".

It seems to me that many folks assume they know what the term "degoogle" means, so I thought it would be fun to explore this in a little more detail. Let me know what you think, in the comments.

I have an old oneplus phone and i need a new phone now...but past few weeks I've really fell into the privacy geek rabbithole and I'm really considering buying a pixel phone just to get graphene os....but somethings are still bothering me.

First of all...i love old oneplus ui. Clean minimal and fast. And i really wanna get a pixel Because now OnePlus is shit. But the thing is....i tried to find out more about grapheneos ui but all i can find is how it has sandboxed playstore and the usual features.

What i wanna know is...

Does is have the same pixel ui that the new flagships get?

Does it get the new android features like saving split screen apps etc.

Will battery life take a hit?

Am i better off buying the older pixel like the 8 series? I really like having the best available flagships.

I just wanna know how the daily user experience is and is it really worth it for me to use graphene instead of pixel ui? Because i really value great ui and cool new features but now i also want a privacy focused phone.

I heard somewhere that in rooted phones you can trick apps for example...you can take a screenshot of a snap in snapchat and it won't alert the sender Because your phone is rooted. Is this also available in grapheneos?

Hello i really care about privacy but i dont have money for an Google Pixel for Graphen OS is there any posible way to degoogle an galaxy a51?

Hey everyone, I’m still somewhat new to de-googling and recently got /e/OS up and running on my phone. Now I feel like I’m falling into a rabbit hole of not wanting any apps that have any form of tracker, as indicated by the privacy rankings of the e/OS app store. I’ve ended up using Firefox with an adblocker as a webapp for most things that I need but can’t get in a tracker-free app.

What I don’t fully understand yet are the implications of these app trackers. With /e/OS hiding my IP and true location, does it mean these trackers only monitor my behavior within their respective apps and send it back? Will this data have scrambled IP and Location? If so, I’m okay with some tracking within apps.

However, my concern is whether these apps would track me outside their operating bounds, like the typical “all-encompassing” tracking used to build the perfect ad profile. For example, if I have Google’s app installed but only use it in emergencies to get quick public transport info, would it still be collecting data on me in the background? Or other apps like Spotify (Spotube doesn't work for me unfortunately) or Revolut, for convenience– are they tracking me even when I’m not using them?

It feels like I’m steering in the right direction with privacy, but maybe I’m over-steering a bit. Can someone explain what having apps with trackers means for my /e/OS (or other degoogle setupa when I’m not actively using them?

Thanks in advance!

I want to install any other os for my rog phone 8 bit also want my armory create an other asus utility things

I really want to know

For years I used Gmail for my main personal email account. I got away from them two years ago, and have not been giving that address out to anyone. The Gmail account is still there.

A month ago I bought a car. I contacted the dealer ahead of time. I probably gave them my email - one of my new addresses - and phone number. The day I made the purchase was a long day. Part of this was that after we agreed on terms I sat in the waiting room while they did paperwork

During this waiting time I am sure they were checking me out. This is understandable - for big purchases the seller wants to make sure the buyer is legit. Eventually I went into the room to sign a lot of papers. Close to the end of my time there, the guy said he would email me the sales contract. "Is [my old Gmail account] good?" he asked. I was taken aback that he knew this email address, but didn't have my wits about me to object (tired toward the end of this long day). So I said that email would get to me.

Later when I got home I became concerned that they had found out my Gmail address in their research on me, and for some reason had a policy of sending sales contracts to Gmail accounts rather than addresses where they don't recognize the provider (it's my own domain.)

So Google got my sales contract. I deleted the email immediately but we know Google doesn't delete anything. Google now knows exactly how much I paid, the VIN number, and the specs of the car. i will drive this car for 7 years, and Google knows everything.

Is it possible the dealer found my old Gmail address during their research on me? They knew my name, address, phone. And if so, it is plausible that they have a policy of sending as many sales contracts as possible to Gmail addresses, and hence ignored my new email address?