Some services to reduce Google in our lifesteemCreated with Sketch.

in #privacy6 years ago (edited)

Can you remember at least a day when you used the Internet, without using Google's products? They are everywhere! Google knows what you are searching for, watching, listening... Do you have a Gmail account? Using google docs? Even if you're not using Google's products directly their advertising and analytic systems are integrated on the most websites you're visiting. I don't think you can do without Google, anyway I couldn't, but let's don't give it a monopoly, let's minimize it in our life :)

Screenshot from 2018-02-14 22-08-43.png
Screenshot from https://whotracks.me/, really informative resource

DuckDuckGo

Yea, I know the name is funny, but the idea is great!
DuckDuckGo.com is a search engine in no way inferior to Google, sometimes it's even smarter. And what is more important it won't store your search data and will always show the real search results, same things for everyone. Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention, that Google's search is lies to you, showing only what you want to see... I'm afraid to go too long, so just check this out.
Also, DuckDuckGo can help to hide your search history from the internet provider, by default, most of the search engines will use a GET request for the search query, so your search string will be included in URL. Just turn off "GET requests" option on settings page to use this feature.

Disconnect.me

Another cool project, offering you protection from third-party analytic tools integrated on almost all websites. You just need to install their browser extension. Disconnect.me provides a proxy for using any search engine, so if you still want to use google, despite all that you learned, you may use Google's search through https://disconnect.me/search. Also, they have a great mobile app, providing high-level privacy, security, and anonymity across all your device, but unfortunately it's not free. Anyway, you should use their browser protection at least.

AdBlock

I'm sure you've heard about AdBlock, just wanna say it not only removes annoying ads but also blocks scripts collecting your data. Important to notice, that by default it will whitelist google's ads.

Firefox/Brave

In fact, anything, but not Chromе. I prefer Firefox, cause they are really working on privacy. Heard about Tor browser? It's based on Firefox, basically, it is Firefox reconfigured to work with Tor out of the box and with some useful plugins. Brave is good too, but it's not ready I think. Both projects are also partnering with DuckDuckGo, in fact, there is good community fighting for our privacy ;)
I don't think you'll be surprised, but Google Chrome also collects data about you, it can see private pages you're visiting which is unavailable for google bots, maybe they are using it just to improve search engine, but who knows?

Protonmail

Switzerland based company (already seems cool, yea?) offers us a secure, encrypted and (why not?) anonymous email service. All your mailbox stored on the server is encrypted and no one except you may access it (and except receivers of course). It is also important that the contributors do not forget about usability, so you don't need tо sacrifice convenience for safety. Of course, if it's not hard for you to remember 2 passwords instead of 1 :)

Ok, I think that's all, hope you're not bored :)
Just check out this simple services, it will take you up to 10-15 minutes, but the result will be much better. And don't forget to tell your friends, this is really awesome projects and they deserve to be popular. Even if you still don't care about privacy, this may help you to speed up browsing and save on internet traffic ;)

If you find this useful, follow me, I'll try to post more about privacy and anonymity, going deeper by time!

P.S. if you know some good projects which I forgot to mention, please leave a comment below, let's protect privacy together ;)

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Agreed, we've become complacent in this matter, Google has become so pervasive in our digital society. If you let them they'll dial & answer your phone calls, tracking your every movement, your mobile starts talking back to you w/out any voice commands; it's the ultimate spyware.

This is why I just got ProtonMail two days ago, next step is to run it on via a Tor browser. Thank you for posting!

Thanks for replying!
Google will rule the world soon, we'll do just what our smartphones will tell us to do :)

I cant live without google

Maybe you should try?

Yes sure, learnt a lot from your post

Тhanks, nice to know that :)

Upvoted! good read! bramgg.crypto

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