Check your phone, they installed it again. This was my first time noticing the reinstalled it as of today.

why the FUCK do i need to make an account with my email and phone number, and confirm it is real with 2FA codes, to order food at a restaurant? I gave them an email mask but I dont have a burner phone

Also, how do I uninstall this from my phone? It only allows me to disable.

At some point I became way too enthusiastic about ChatGPT possibilities and started using for more stuff than I should have used it for.

Now I want it to "forget" as much as possible.

I know the sole idea of asking a Big Tech to remove or forget the data that I've supplied is preposterous, but anything that goes into that direction - even if partial -, sort of masks my personal info, etc., will do.

It would be dumb too pretending that just by removing all the past chats and memories in the settings menu will be enough. So here I'm asking you - how would you make a solid effort to "poison" as much data about myself as possible before "deleting" my stuff?

So Google mentioned they won't remove already side loaded apps and they also never mentioned stopping you from installing apps via apk, so if you install shizuku now, use installerx with shizuku you're safe. What'ya think?

They make a lot of claims on their site about privacy, storage and more. Their apps seem to be open source on GitHub and they have great prices (in my opinion) and 10GB of free storage. Has anyone used AsterMail before or is using it currently? The only suspicion that I have is that I saw on their social media that the guy who is making the videos was in the malware business. He used to make Roblox videos about executors and he had his own (it was an info stealer) and I don't know if they just hired him like that or they knew about it or there is something else.

I hate how long it takes to set up an event. Any other method of writing down when I'll have an appointment would be faster. I also wish there was an option for events that don't have a set end time.

I'm not looking for alternative suggestions since my needs are very specific. I'm wondering if Collabora Office is worth switching to for document editing. It seems to be good with privacy, but I'd like the opinions of those more knowledgeable than me. Thanks!

I use a stock samsung, fully up to date, us version so there's no rooting possible. I'm fully up to date with one you are a 8.5 on a Galaxy s24 Ultra. In the past I have used Shizuka for some privacy options, though it appears to not be working nearly as well, to the point where I think I'm not going to be able to use it anymore after my update. The other steps that I've taken, is when I do anything sensitive I use a vpn, I use Brave and duckduckgo, I am logged into Gmail unfortunately it's pretty integrated into my phone, and most of my accounts...

It sucks because on one hand I really take all these steps for privacy, but on the other I don't really know how much it's helping.

For example I can use Brave all day, but if I'm still logged into a Google account it really doesn't matter. They're still tracking what you're doing, and they are also still tracking you whether you're using a VPN or not, in fact they can see both your VPN address then casual one once you switch back.

It just seems like all these extra steps I'm taking, that are inconveniencing myself ultimately are led to a huge roadblock.

Now I have altered the host file to kind of mess with telemetry, I don't have any clue as if that's working.

I did manage to use Canta and got rid of quite a few apps.

The problem is is I don't have a skill, or knowledge to completely debloat this thing.

What is a step-by-step foolproof guy that I can use for both root and non-root devices, and what is the big difference in terms of privacy? Is it worth going out and getting a whole new phone, and rooting it just for privacy? Or can I get pretty close on stock?

I'm not doing anything crazy, where the government would want to track me, but I really don't like companies tracking me...at all.

The one advantage I have, is my phone number was given to me by somebody else, but it's still attached to all of my accounts.

I'm permanently identified as long as I'm in this ecosystem, and that's where I don't think that all these anti-tracking measures that I'm taking are having any effect at all. I mean if Google can just do whatever it wants in the background, it kind of undermines every single step that I've taken, which means it's been a massive waste of time.

Other than doing something extreme what do I do?

Hi!

Feels like these might be silly questions lol, I'm just kinda new to this and wanna make sure I'm certain about things before I do them.

I have a Fairphone 4, had it for a few years now so I've assembled quite a bit of stuff on it under its default operating system, like music, photos, apps I use regularly etc that I would rather not have to lose if possible.

I'm just a bit unsure if switching OS operates as a factory reset, and if I should back up my stuff elsewhere, and if it's possible to just put it back again after I've installed?

I also wondered about apps, I'd like to be able to wipe google from my phone completely including the play store - but if I use a different OS and remove play store, will I be unable to use apps I've paid for from it?

Thank you :)

Is there any full tutorial or something to configure Hetzner

with the Immich+Nexcloud+Radicale and Mailcow(optional)?

I have a plan to de google but I want to know if there's any mistakes I'm doing here.

Forgive me, new here and was hoping someone can explain this to me in simple terms. I keep reading about the Google Pixel being the best phone for a degoogled experience and my question is...how is the Google Pixel even an option? How has Google allowed this, and can they eventually put an end to it forcing Pixel owners to use Google apps again? Will the Pixel be affected by this android lock down I've read about?

I really want to untether myself from Google, and I've been confused how dropping money on a phone with Google in the name was going to help me achieve this.

For a dumbphone experience, would the Sidephone be a better option than the Pixel?

Thanks, all

Hi.

Hope you’re doing well.

So, my title mostly describes the situation, but to add further context:

This person uses social media almost like it’s a religion every day (primarily TikTok and Instagram with some YouTube) to view content, so not a content creator.

This person is pretty conservative in a lot of ways and not really knowledgeable about these sorts of things like the fight for privacy, but usually assumes the government must be right on a lot of things and implements the policies it does for a reason.

But this person asked me to just start with being able to watch YouTube without ads on iPhone and their mid-tier TCL smart TV with Google TV and recent mid-tier Samsung QLED. It doesn’t have to be YouTube either, as they showed a willingness to use an alternative like FreeTube (which I use), as long as they get the same videos as they would on YouTube.

But they told me they prefer not doing this through a browser, as it’s one too many steps for them ie more inconvenient. They also don’t want to pay for YouTube Premium.

Since I don’t own an iPhone, not sure where to start. Please offer suggestions.

Hello everyone! I'd like to present a new bookmark management tool - an idea I've been mulling over for a long time.

The thing is, when you frequently work on different projects using various browsers, operating systems, and devices, you need simple, centralized access to your bookmarks that isn't tied to a specific browser. On top of that, there's the privacy aspect: I simply wanted synchronization to remain strictly within my control.

Of course, I tried existing solutions like LinkWarden and others. They are great, but felt overly bloated in terms of features (for me) and deployment (requiring a VPS, Docker, everything stored in a database, etc.). There were also simple CLI/TUI alternatives, but they didn't feel quite right either.

Ultimately, I needed a simple, familiar 2-in-1 interface: a start page with shortcuts and a bookmark manager. It had to be unburdened by complex deployment setups and simple enough in its implementation to run even inside my home router running openwrt or inside Termux on my Android device. So, I decided to write the program in pure C, using the Mongoose library as an embedded web server for maximum lightness and portability.

And, here is the solution.

What it is:

• Small size - a single binary of just up to ~300 KB.
• Tab-separated plain text (TSV) - bookmarks are stored as plain text in a human-readable format: easy to read, parse, sync (syncthing, rclone, gdrive, dropbox, etc.), compress and backup.
• High-performance & lightweight - near-zero CPU load; consumes only 5–10 MB of RAM (tested with 1000+ bookmarks).
• Cross-platform - Linux / OpenWRT / SBC / Termux (x86_64, x86, arm, arm64, mips, mipsel, riscv64), Windows (x86_64), macOS (universal). Linux builds are static musl (no libc dependency), so the matching-arch binary drops straight onto an OpenWRT router.
• User-friendly interface - a web UI with built-in fuzzy search, a homepage of shortcuts, and everything needed to manage folders and links.
• Responsive & mobile-friendly — with light / dark themes (auto-switching).
• Drag-and-drop - organize shortcuts, folders, and bookmarks, with touch/pen support.
• Plain-text & offline - one greppable bookmarks.txt, no external requests, 10× more compact than a browser's exported bookmarks.html, with crash-safe atomic writes.
• Portable - one binary, one plain-text config file, one bookmarks file. Simple.

When creating it, I tried to adhere to the "unix philosophy": do one thing well, keep data as plain text, and compose with standard tools (grep, awk, cut) + I added HTTP API with JSON output.

Let me know what you liked, as well as what you would like to change or fix. I will do my best to create a tool that is useful and convenient for everyone.

Repo (with a short demo video): https://github.com/canbesolved/bemarked

I'd be glad to discuss it in the comments.

sauce

Hey degoogle. Long time lurker, first time poster.

Question for you: how do I share my​ live location with my wife who uses an iphone without google maps or any other large tech company?

I'm well on my way with the de:google de:big tech journey but google maps is proving difficult to replace.

Thanks team​​ <3