How to stay away from Google and other evil tech giants: Difference between revisions

* '''[https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ Firefox]''' ('''Beginner Tip''') is the gold standard in free web browsing and even when considering proprietary apps probably only Chrome comes near performance-wise. With many built in features and a huge set of available addons you can turn Firefox into a very privacy friendly browser, but still many groups don't recommend it because it doesn't go far enough. E.g.: ❗️This browser comes with Google as the standard search engine. That's why there are many browsers based on Firefox that e.g. don't come with certain proprietary features, don't use Google as a standard search engine, don't promote proprietary addons or don't have the voluntary tracking options that Firefox has. Here are some examples:

** '''[https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.klar/ Klar]''' is a mobile browser and a great choice for unexperienced users who still want a high privacy level, as it comes very privacy friendly out of the box. You don't have to change any settings (except for the search engine) or (can't) download any addons and Klar will already let you browse the web very privately. E.g. It will regularly delete cache and other private data and it won't let you store passwords. Therefore it is not very convenient to use for browsing sites that you regularly use while logged in. ❗️This browser comes with Google as the standard search engine.

** '''[https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ Fennec F-Droid]''' is an attempt to remove all proprietary bits from mobile Firefox, but there still might be some blobs left and it still comes with anti-features on F-Droid. ❗️This browser comes with Google as the standard search engine.

* '''[https://f-droid.org/packages/acr.browser.lightning/ Lightning]''' is a nice browser I used for a while. On many mobile devices it will be one of the fastest browsers and with it you are even able to browse via [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) Tor] quite fast. ❗️This browser comes with Google as the standard search engine.

❗️Using browser extensions not many others use leads to your browser leaving a unique ''fingerprint'' on a site and that might mean you can be identified or sites at least know which other sites you used. That's why e.g. the Tor Browser doesn't recommend using more than the pre-installed addons.

* '''[https://www.ecosia.org/ Ecosia]''' ('''Environmental Tip''') is not known for being a very privacy friendly search engine (though they are working on it), but for it's "greenness". Ecosia has advertisement, but donates a large portion if it's advertising revenue to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation reforestation] projects and other environmental causes. ❗️Ecosia is hosted on Cloudflare and their image search depends on Bing (Microsoft), but the websearch works even if you block connections to Bing. I use Ecosia as my primary search engine, because sometimes you have to prioritize and I think saving the planet is more important than my privacy. Also I am quite confident I am doing enough to make sure I'm not leaking too much data while using Ecosia.

* '''[https://www.signal.org/ Signal]''' is the perfect chat app to move to from Whatsapp. It works very similarly and is secure and private by default. I recommend downloading it from their site, not from Google Play, even though they recommend the opposite. ❗️ Signal is great, but like I said there is no perfect messenger app and Signal has downsides too. Messages are end-to-end encrypted, but the server is closed source and hosted on evil clouds. So the metadata (phone number, who writes to whom and when) is openly accessible by Amazon, Google, Microsoft & Cloudflare. Read an extensive list of everything that might be wrong with Signal [https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/779 here].

* '''[https://meet.jit.si Jitsi Meet]''' is another option but ❗️ currently it's in the Cloudflare cloud! Better use '''[https://framatalk.org/ FramaTalk]''' instead.

* '''[https://kodi.tv/ Kodi]''' is a great universal media player for desktop and [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.xbmc.kodi/ mobile]. Play music, movies, TV shows, podcasts etc from your own Kodi database or stream them. ❗️ But beware of proprietary addons. Unfortunately Kodi doesn't display licenses of addons. Also note that the website is in Cloudflare’s walled garden

* '''[https://librivox.org/ LibriVox]''' is another source for public domain audio books, but ❗️the site contains Google tracking. You can however access the entire catalogue and more from the '''[https://archive.org/details/audio_bookspoetry Internet Archive: Audio Books & Poetry]''' too.

* '''[https://www.avocadostore.de/ Avocado Store]''' ('''Environmental Tip''') is once again an ethical choice I'm throwing in here. It is a shop for eco-fashion and home supplies where each product must fulfill at least one principle (like bio, long-lasting, recycled & recycleable, vegan,...) . ❗️Unfortunately the site is hosted on the Google cloud and contains Google tracking and all pictures are stored on the Amazon cloud.

* '''[https://gitlab.com/ Gitlab]''' ('''Beginner Tip''') is a collaboration platform often recommended, e.g. by PRISM-break and it is the one F-Droid trusts with their data. ❗️Beware though, the flagship instance Gitlab.com is hosted on the Google cloud and is proxied by Cloudflare (thus effectively in an exclusive walled garden) and it [https://git.sdf.org/humanacollaborator/humanacollabora/src/branch/master/gitlab-dot-com.md fails] many criteria in FSF’s repository evaluation, so don't use that. The community edition is free software and can be used to power platforms hosted on other clouds. E.g.: