Hi privacy community. I genuinely want to hear from both people who are very private and those who didn’t go to such an extent.
I started my journy since high school and replaced a lot of stuff since then.
Ditched most of Google’s app . Only 2~3 apps on my phone require google play store(Banking/School’s app/ Train ticket).
Switched to Protonmail + Email alias, and manage my passwords with Bitwarden.
Got off social media and made sure I removed all data that can be found about me in quick Google searches.
Switched to Linux for desktop.
But
I can’t get rid of gmail because I still need those apps, and some professors heavily relies on google services.
Windows ain’t getting off my laptop because I need to make sure document format and software compatibility don’t become reasons I fail a class.
I feel like the obstacle I hit isn’t just convenience anymore, it’s my life and the situations I’m in.
I wish to hear what kind of dicisions / realizations / mindsets you guys had in your journy.
Thanks in advance.
This is what I think: You cannot be 100% private, but you can be 95% private. Most of the tracking I want to avoid is from websites, mail and my devices OS.
With ublock origin in advanced mode, thunderbird + Protonmail, Linux (I’m dual booting and also have a windows VM for the things not working on Linux) and a VPN I can reach a satisfying amount of privacy without wasting too much time and effort. I’m also hosting an unfederated matrix server for private communications but I rarely use it.
To have better privacy than this I’d need a lot more effort, but the return wouldn’t be big enough, so I’m good. The only other thing I’d like to do is switching to a phone with grapheneOS or something like that.
I use linux on my desktop and laptop and dont own a running copy of windows at this point. I‘m switching from iPhone to rooted OP6 with postmarketOS atm and I host my own cloud, music, tv, websites, social media, etc.
My goal never was privacy but ownership of my devices. The privacy aspect is a neat addition.
Some of my friends still have whatsapp so I bridge to them from my matrix server. If I need to use google tools I do so in the browser. I ditched most proprietary apps at this point.
It does lead to people looking at me funny if I say „sorry, I dont use windows“ but I dont care.
I still need to get my sonos to be owned by me but thats a future project.
In summary I would say if I need proprietary stuff for a project thats no big deal. I just make sure I dont go back to using it for other things.
Good luck on your journey.
Why do you need gmail for school? Is a school run account? Maybe you could just get rid of personal use.
When you use gmail I would use Thunderbird and K-9
You have solved what you have direct control over, the next step is things you have indirect control over like the policies of your school or government. Get engaged civically. Vote and advocate privacy in your community and to your elected representatives. Ask businesses if they will accept forms of payment which provide greater privacy than credit card like Bitcoin lightning or Monero.
Run Linux as your host operating system and run Windows in a virtualized environment such as VirtualBox. That’s how I made my transition. I was Windows only and barely started playing with Linux. Then I installed Linux entirely and put Windows on a virtual machine. And now I don’t even have the Windows virtual machine anymore.
