;TLDR: Is privacy actions on an individual level worth pursuing, when friends and family are doing nothing to strengthen their privacy and when living in a country where my social security number, phone number, and so on, really can not be hidden?
Hi fellow DeGooglers. I have spent the last few years degoogling mine, and my GF:s lives and I am really happy about coming as far as I/we have come.
I am now starting to doubt alot of the things we have degoogled in our lives and I want to ask this community about it.
We live in a country, that has national records about everyone living in the nation. Almost every service the inhabitants of this country use, are relying on social security numbers, phone numbers, email and so on. We also almost daily rely on our banking apps to identify ourselves when using different services.
To this day I have persuaded a lot of our friends to use Signal but all of them use Signal as an extra app to communicate with just me or my GF.
My GF still has Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook, you name it and I am wondering how private I/we really am/are when the friends I/we are interacting with, are doing nothing to strengthen their privacy?
Is I wrote above, it is common for me to give my address, phone number, (throwaway)email when signing up for almost any service in the country I live in. Oftentimes one also has to identify with a form of a banking app, that almost all residents in this country has.
I am thinking that alot of the services I, have to, use know who I am, they have my phone number and they are almost certainly sharing it with third party companies (within GDPR). These companies also have the phone numbers of my friends who have my telephone number, and that way, the big data companies could easily link my phone number to who I am, based on that my friends and family have my number in their contacts list.
Is privacy worth pursuing on my part, or is it actually just redundant? Could I actually just use, lets say, Whatsapp/Messenger/Snapchat and it would not really matter?
Edit1: Services that I use: Proton, Mullvad, GrapheneOS, Simplelogin, Nextcloud, and all the usual FOSS apps everyone is using Services that my GF uses: The same as me, but also Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Messenger and a few more.
As others have said, it doesn’t have to be black or white. 100% anonymity/privacy on the internet is almost virtually impossible for most use-cases for accessing the internet in the first place, but that doesn’t mean you just let go and let it happen. You can still take steps with protecting as much as you can while at the same time still use the internet comfortably, even if it means having to maintain some non-foss apps just to keep in touch with friends/family and have accounts with major platforms. Just do as much as you reasonably can with what you can influence and control.
I started my journey to degoogle myself very recently. I’m still to make the transition from Google stuff, but for now I treat it two fold.
- I treat it as a side hobby - I know it would be more convenient to just stay under the Google umbrella, but I’m interested in the state of FOSS and how far you can replicate gtools. I’m waiting for my Synology NAS drive and hopefully this will cover most of my needs.
- A personal statement/protest against greedy companies - I know that cutting access to some of my data (I’m not disillusioned - I know they still have a lot of my data and they will still have access to some) won’t make a difference, but by switching from WhatsApp to Signal, I created a conversation among my friends and family. They became a bit more aware of the current situation. Same with switching from Reddit to Lemmy. The further I travel on my path, the more people around me are interested in their own privacy.
So if you are realistic about it, as you are judging from your post, I would say it’s worth - even if just as a middle finger to the big, privacy violating conglomerates. We shouldn’t just roll over and give up our personal lives.
Also, you will have full deniability of any future repercussions of people allowing big corpos doing with their data whatever they want.
This is absolutely correct. The process to fully make this sort of transition is arduous and must be fought in small battles. When I decided I wanted to pursue this protest, I bought a NAS, and completely separate phone from my daily driver to prepare my alternatives. Over time, the convenience of using self-hosted/FOSS vs Google became imperceptible, and soon I was ready to make the full leap to my new phone. That was an incredible moment. I believe that if we share our experiences and knowledge along this journey, we’ll instill confidence into others and inspire them to join us
+1 about the protest aspect.
most of us who are interested in “privacy” could have written what you wrote. Here, we, of course, would say “yes, it’s worth pursuing”. For a great majority it’s “i don’t care” (so don’t ask them ;)
i remember how internet was before cookies and how life was before smartphones. I really can’t understand today’s popular carelessness around intimacy, privacy, personal information &c
don’t give up. I was alone on signal at first, then we were two. Now most of my contacts are in signal (knowing how difficult this move was, i don’t get into the discussions about session &c. Getting people off facebook is enough for a first step.
DeGoogling is so much of a hassle, i don’t expect it to be of interest to general public
I’m glad there are more people here, that are thinking about these daily dilemmas. The thing is, that I have already, since years, converted my family and friends to Signal, family is using it without a problem, but friends are using it pretty seldom, and then they do not get notifications when I am writing to them. So I got them on Signal, but I still can’t contact some of them because of the notifications issue.😅 That’s what made me write this post about redundancy.
Do you use other means of real time communication other than Signal and plain old SMS?
then comes email and finally emerges an actual call 😱
i tell people clearly that i don’t need to send even more money to some of the richest people in the world just because i want to communicate with friends and family.
if they’re so lazy that they can’t even make this slightest effort for our well being, then they won’t be missed.
For most of the people it’s not a choice, it’s just inertia. We have to remind them that it’s a choice.
i did experience, and sometimes still do, everything you wrote. We just need to be patient.
You’re doing great. Only you decide whether this is right for you. If you using other companies give 100% of the information about you, by taking steps, you may cut this to 50%, 25%, 10%. It may not be perfect, but it’s about restricting this information to protect things about yourself. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. Each step is about gain (to privacy), vs the cost (of inconvenience).
Do I know Google is spying on every email of every product I buy, the time, etc. and building in depth profiles? Probably. Will proton mail, probably not. Less motive. Also, if you use Google search, browser, email, and phone, all that information is in the hands of 1 company. It’s harder to pull together, and effectively use. These companies are clever and skillful, but the steps we take mean the common setups they have that work for 99% of people may not work for us. They would have to spend more money to get information on us. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely right now? Probably not.
I would say it’s worth it! Pure anonymity is unachievable, it’s more about putting as much roadblock on the way as possible.
Like… making yourself harder to find by another guy. Not allowing big tech to have your data in an arms reach.
Treat privacy like a fun game, go as far and as slow as you like. It’s totally fine to take a break and do more once you’re motivated to do so.
No, you can never achieve complete privacy but you can stop sending each and every information about yourself to companies. This way you learn about new things, be tech litrate, know how to circumvent roadblocks put by companies like ads, etc. Never ever completely depend on one company. If their server goes down you will still have your stuff.
Thank you for all your nice thoughts and good advice. I think I am just having a low regarding my privacy journey right now, but I will get back up on the horse eventually. I also think I am overestimating, when companies get hold of some information, they have more information about me than I think. Sometimes I think I have to remind myself, that companies are really more interested in my habits and purchasing patterns, than my telephone number. I guess I do, in that regard, mix and confuse privacy with security a bit. I actually do think that my habits make me pretty secure, so then there is just privacy left. :)
