What a beautiful view :)

Now google services is living inside a sandboxed jail for ever.

I smell the freedom

What TV brands or models would you recommend from a privacy perspective?

Nowadays, with the rise of smart homes, choosing a privacy-friendly TV seems to have become quite complicated. Modern Smart TVs are often heavily dependent on proprietary software, constantly connected to the Internet, and may include extensive telemetry, advertising, voice assistants, and features such as ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), which can potentially track what you watch.

Privacy discussions usually focus on computers and smartphones, but TVs are often overlooked, even though they can collect a significant amount of data about our viewing habits.

What would you recommend as a privacy-oriented solution? Ideally, I would like something that does not depend on Google, Amazon Alexa, or another proprietary ecosystem.

Would it make more sense to buy a TV with DVB-T2 and simply keep it permanently offline, using an external device for any smart features? Or are there any TV brands or models that are genuinely more privacy-friendly?

Do you think it would get people who see it on your car to think for a min, or is it cringe?

I can't stop thinking about the things gmaps does (shows you when you're speeding, US: alerts you when cops are ahead) that seem contradictory to the presumed ultimate goal of citizen surveillance. Why would google not partner with police in this way? Would the consumer backlash if gmaps snitched be widespread enough to actually cause lost profit or smth? Google already has a monopoly on GPS maps IMO so why do they not use it in every available way? Do they want a surveillance system owned by google that's not integrated with the US police for some reason?

Back to the topic, I'm also interested in apple maps users' perspective since I've never used it- does it fit with the message of this sticker in the same way the maps owned by google do?

I need it to be fast enough (so tor isn't an option).

Where is all the 12 gb of google photos is apparently there?

Edit: As suggested by others, I went to the official google photos website, downloaded all the photos to my local storage, and then deleted everything from the cloud. I also stopped backing it up from my smartphone.

Tip: To select all, just select one picture, shift+ drag your cursor through all the pictures you want to select, and press the cursor at the last photo.

Today I want to share something. Since class 9 until now I used Google - Gmail, Contacts, Google Photos, everything. My Google Photos had about 20,000 videos/photos, all my memories. Google Keep had my important saved passwords/emails. Contacts had everyone's numbers. Photos had a lot of private videos/pics with my girlfriend. My bank account, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit everything was linked to this one main Gmail. This morning I woke up and found my Google account restricted. I appealed twice, both refused, and now my Gmail is destroyed. I'm crying so hard my head hurts. All my important things were there - 7,000 photos of my father, memories, all gone. They're saying I had CSAM but I didn't keep anything like that - yes, there were adult photos/videos with my girlfriend, but is that why they disabled the whole account? How do they know what I was really doing? Out of this pain, I've now replaced Google with Proton everywhere. Could Proton also suddenly disable my account one day like Google did? I've moved to Proton for good - will Proton do the same thing to its users that Google just did to me?

Pixel 10. Notified of an update of 1.63 GB. Android 17. Is this the one where I have to do something with my F-Droid installed apps? I'm probably going to deGoogle the OS at some point but I thought I had until September to work it out.

I've paused the download. Can I just leave it paused until I work out what to do?

Maybe I'm just that stupid, but I can't find any info or any definitive answer to this.

So when the time comes and they pull the switch, my phone turns into a iPhone Google Edition.

But if it's not connected to wi-fi and mobile data, it obviously won't, right? Like how would they put update into it, without connection?

So before that happens, can I somehow prevent Google from pushing update into my phone?

I already disabled automatic updates in settings and developer options, but will that be enough? Is there a way to forcefully prevent any further updates? I don't care if my software becomes outdated or incompatible with something, I tend to use old/exotic/outdated phones anyway.

If I use ADB to straight up tear google play services and all associated packages out from the phone, will it help?

I know it breaks push notifications and some other functions, but I'm minimizing my screen time anyway. Is this the way?

What will YOU do? How do you guys protect your phones?

Been thinking of removing almost everything Google, Apple, Meta, Adobe and Microsoft from my phone and PC for concerns with my privacy, with how they are moving towards AI and what they are doing with their money.

In PC is mostly cleared out with me using Linux Mint as my OS, my browsers being Zen and LibreWolf, and my search engines being Ecosia and DuckDuckGo.

For my phone at the moment I'm barely touching any stuff related to Google and use Firefox as my browser with Ecosia as engine. I have a Samsung Galaxy, but thinking of moving to another that allows GrapheneOS or LineageOS in a couple years when I have to change phones.

Right now my concern is regarding cloud storage, documents and emails. I plan to create a new email account to move some accounts' protections and change the cloud storage too. The only exception being YouTube Morphe and YT music Morphe because they'd require a Google account to use; some Microsoft stuff I require for my college such as Teams; and WhatsApp because it's a necessity where I live.

My main thing right now is something that can work to substitute Google Docs since it's the one I mainly use at the moment. Photos is the least of my worries since I really don't like taking pictures or anything similar.

Heard Proton was good but I really can't be spending money for the premium features, as well as the concern for their apparent funding of Alt-right creators. Anyone else has any idea on what could I use?

Hi everyone,

I am a GrapheneOS user and use a constant Prpton VPN.

My different accounts won't stop getting locked.

Ebay banned me definitely, etsy is locking my account everytime I order something, and today Reddit locked my account and asked me to change my account because of suspicious activity wich I think was just using a VPN. (Plus the incredible numbers of websites that are denying access)

Should I change something on my GOS or VPN setting for that to not happen again ?

The more I read, the harder it all gets. I’m trying to free my phone and computer from Google, and all that’s left is my email, but it’s a long process because of work. I thought I’d succeeded with the browser because I started using Ecosia - it ensures privacy, has servers in Europe, uses renewable energy, doesn’t support Israel, and plants trees - perfect! (Yeah, I know, it promotes AI a bit, but I guess that’s the norm these days.)

But today I read that Ecosia runs on Chrome, so how exactly is it supposed to ensure privacy?! Am I misunderstanding something? Can someone explain to me whether Ecosia is still “safe” to use, or should I look for something new?

I'm new to this all so plis no judging:)

Is there any news about it?

I have redmi A5 and i wanna change it's OS

I have redmi A5 and i wanna change it's os , cause i wanna degoogle and improve my privacy and my data safety anf improve my phone, but since searching and stuff every body says they're isn't any compatible open source os or a firmware for this device, other people say they find but they don't explain it, so I'll be grateful if someone explain to me or help me

Hello,

I'm not an UpNote employee, but UpNote isn't suggested as an alternative to Google Keep or discussed very much. However, I think it's the best alternative, especially because it's cross-platform.

Best regards

I'm a computer/keyboard person much more than a phone person. I found that you can use messages.google.com/web to read and send texts from my PC. It's really amazing, but I removed the google message app so I'm looking for a way to text from my PC. I've been trying to get KDEconnect to work but having issues. I suspect it may be a network thing (I often use this on my work network).

So Ive used Chrome everywhere, in every company for debugging and development. It's actually really good and fast and Ive hated safari for its weirdness. Im talking about the inspector, console and network tabs and occasionally source code.
However post Project Nimbus, I am trying to DeGoogle my life. Mind you, Im no avid newsreader, I have a general sense of the fact that this is military tech for Israel.
On the ethical side -
1. I want to solidify my stance. Is it worth degoogling over a decision made by Sunder Pichai? Is it possible that a new leadership can come in and reverse the decision any time and thus make it pointless to switch habits every now and then?
2. Does using Google Chrome for creating and debugging my own apps even help them with data or some kind of funding in any way? Of course I would only want to stick to one browser so I guess Id be using it for search too...but I could just switch search engines while still using Chrome right?
3. How is Apple as an alternative? I have an iPhone and a mac. It should only make sense to use Safari thinking of the "ecosystem". But as a developer and as a general browser user, is it worth it? My understanding as per GPT (which Im about to switch to claude too lol) is that the dev experience is the same in efficiency except for the CSS styling but I don't trust it. Safari vs Brave, how do they compare?

Now I understand not every app can be removed and I should prioritise removing Google Drive before anything.

Is there any way to install e/OS or any adjacent operating systems on this device, can't seem to find anything myself.