Now, I am hoping I am not the only one in this community who has realized that privacy should be one of the top considerations when choosing what software to use on any device.
Leaving Reddit has been the catalyst for me to realize this, as silly as that might sound, and now I have to re-evaluate my list of “convenient” apps that are in NO WAY secure or private.
I want to ask everyone here if they have any recommendations for essentially replacement applications for all of the major categories of software that we use on our computers and mobile devices.
For example, here are some of the switches I made today: Chrome Mobile > Opera Mobile Chrome Desktop > Opera Desktop Facebook Messenger > Signal Facebook Social Media > No alternative just deleted it.
My hope with this post is that we can have a discussion on privacy apps in general as trying to track down information for each sector one by one and test each out can be arduous.
To kick off the discussion here are some other categories that I have not figured out an answer for yet:
Search Engines (duckduckgo is mentioned a lot, why?) Operating Systems Cloud Storage Email Providers Podcasts Video/Music Services (Youtube, Paid services, etc) Environment Specific advice for Android, iOS, and any others.
Also if it makes sense, should we consider privacy when choosing, say, a news website to frequent? Or would browser choice ultimately be the decider there.
privacyguides.org has been a great resource for years now. They also have a community at !privacyguides@lemmy.one
Yeah pretty much /thread
This is the best resource on the Internet for taking back privacy.
That said, it’s a long and exhausting road and every time I turn around I learn about some new way these companies are profiling me.
lemmy.one is run by the guy behind privacyguides as well :)
There is a Privacy Guides community there. Just subscribe.
I’ve been using kagi as a search engine for a while. Imo they show pretty strong understanding of why you shouldn’t rely on ad-supported search engines. My experience with searx is that it’s incredibly slow and I feel that search engines are things that should be constantly maintained, so self hosting it feels like a bit of a hassle.
Some useful links also:
This is in addition to the great Privacy Guides link another commenter mentioned.
+1 for alternativeto. Searching for alternatives to popular apps using the filters like “Open Source” as well as operating system, privacy, etc… is a game changer. There’s also comment sections where people sometimes elaborate on certain things like differences between the app you’re comparing to.
