Privacy/freedom alternatives to common sites/services/apps

[MadMage999]

I've been using google and facebook for a LONG time now, however the situation with facebook "tailoring" news feeds and google generally data mining everything I do has led me to reconsider.

What I'm looking for is alternatives to major sites/services like facebook and gmail that respect privacy and freedom. I'm not even sure I want to use firefox to be honest. Their storing every page I visit and "recommending" things based on this feels invasive.

So maybe this thread can grow into something useful for others in the same situation. I'm hoping the KFN community has some useful suggestions, please.

[MadMage999]

I found this site which has a lot of good info, switched email already.

[SpecialEd]

I've been using Tutanota for encrypted email for a few years now and find it quite satisfactory. The only problem is getting others to accept it.

[MadMage999]

I've been using Tutanota for encrypted email for a few years now and find it quite satisfactory. The only problem is getting others to except it.

Not sure what you mean by except it. It doesn't use standard email system?

[jglen490]

In my government-related job, signed and encrypted email in the norm. in the outside world getting someone to accept the idea of an electronically signed/encrypted email with the whole shared key thing is just a pain and probably viewed as paranoia. Understandably so.

Using a VPN, or searching for browsers and tools to protect oneself is an equal pain with the potential for less than stellar performance a real thing. Yeah, it's not necessarily that way. I get it. With the present atmosphere of excessive greed informing everyone's activities, the alternatives automatically include the possibility of going entirely off-grid. There are advantages to that, but there are also some very real disadvantages in the resultant isolation. After all, we humans are social beasts.

So where is the middle ground on this question?

[SpecialEd]

Not sure what you mean by except it. It doesn't use standard email system?

Thanks for catching that, I meant accept. As in some people I have to deal with are perfectly happy not protecting their information and themselves. They don't want to have to enter a password to read an email. If necessary I force it on them or I don't email them. (I am perfectly fine using standard emails for somethings but for others, I insist on end-to-end encryption).

[MadMage999]

Thanks for catching that, I meant accept. As in some people I have to deal with are perfectly happy not protecting their information and themselves. They don't want to have to enter a password to read an email. If necessary I force it on them or I don't email them. (I am perfectly fine using standard emails for somethings but for others, I insist on end-to-end encryption).

Ah. Well, that makes sense. I switched to protonmail, which is automatically encrypted end-to-end with other protonmail users and I believe can send end-to-end encrypted messages to users of other email servers, but I am happy right now just to be off gmail.

Also, I deleted my facebook account. It was bad enough they were data mining, but now they are literally showing you what they want you to see.

[MadMage999]

In my government-related job, signed and encrypted email in the norm. in the outside world getting someone to accept the idea of an electronically signed/encrypted email with the whole shared key thing is just a pain and probably viewed as paranoia. Understandably so.

Using a VPN, or searching for browsers and tools to protect oneself is an equal pain with the potential for less than stellar performance a real thing. Yeah, it's not necessarily that way. I get it. With the present atmosphere of excessive greed informing everyone's activities, the alternatives automatically include the possibility of going entirely off-grid. There are advantages to that, but there are also some very real disadvantages in the resultant isolation. After all, we humans are social beasts.

So where is the middle ground on this question?

Well, I suppose it depends on your comfort level with being watched and having information regarding your activities sold. I am happy to get away from google and facebook, etc. as a first step. Personally I draw the line at manipulation of data, for example not showing me posts by people I subscribed to because they disagree with them politically or whatever.

[TWPonKubuntu]

My opinion is very conservative with respect to online privacy, to the degree that isn't an oxymoronic phrase.

I moved from Firefox to Palemoon (a fork of Firefox). I still use Mozilla Thunderbird for NON-secure email but I have an account with Protonmail for things I don't want made public. I'll confess that I don't use Protonmail very frequently because I seldom express controversial topics in email, nor do I send information which might reveal my future plans and actions. I too have found that most of my friends are unwilling to maintain a matching Protonmail account... So they no longer fall in the category of trusted contacts.

It is more difficult to maintain privacy when using forums, such as Kubuntu Forums and others to which I keep an account, but I find that forums offer better information exchange. Again, I limit the subject matter on which I will engage in discussion.

Social media has become totally unacceptable because of their failure to respect the privacy of their users. I do read about the desire to have a social media website which can be trusted, but I have not yet found anything with meets my criteria.

I'd like to see this whole topic getting attention from forum members. Thanks for starting this thread.

[EDIT] I forgot to include: I avoid Google, Bing, Yahoo and several other large search engines. I've removed them from the search options in my browser and refuse to follow links which are hosted on their servers.

I DO recommend using Startpage.com or DuckDuckGo.com as the default search engine.

[MadMage999]

@TWPonKubuntu: Thanks for replying to the thread. I looked at palemoon website just now and will review it more later, appreciate the info.

[GreyGeek]

I pretty much follow TWPonKubuntu's suggestions and have for several years.

I dropped my FB account within 3 months after I opened it, a decade ago. I had a gmail, G+ and YouTube accounts for 10 years but dropped them when Goggle abandon their "Do no evil" motto and began censoring people. They have a site called passwords.google.com (if your account hasn't yet been deleted). When I checked there I found that they had the login name and password for EVERY site I registered at for the previous ten years, including my bank and the admin name and password of my routers. I canceled my current account and opened a new one with a different debit card and pin. I went to every website they had listed and either canceled my account or changed my login name and password. I had to do that again when I switched from cable Internet -Spectrum - to fiber optic a year ago.

Brave is a browser recommended by many, but I use FireFox 62.0 but block its website. I make StartPage my goto search engine. I have a protonmail account buy other than a test msg I've never used it. I use my ISP's email service and it uses IMAP.

As for as cloud storage is concerned I signed up with MEGA about a month ago and I really like it. There is an app MEGAsync, in the repository, which puts an icon in your system tray. They also have a plugin for FF as well. I have two folders linked to the could: Documents and MEGAsync. On the cloud I have a third folder but I don't link it to any folder on my system. I usually drop files into Documents or MEGAsync and later I use the browser to drag and drop files from MEGAsync in the cloud to my third folder in the cloud. If you add or delete a file in Documents or MEGAsync those files will automatically be added or deleted in the cloud. That's why I created a third folder not linked to any folder on my system. I currently have 13, 655 files and 300 folders(most under Documents) stored up there, for a total of 8.75GB. I have 50GB for free but 35GB of it is a "bonus" and will disappear in 135 days. I am seriously considering buying 200GB for $5.67US/mo. But, having that data on two internal HDs and three external USB HDs is probably all I really need. My incremental send and receive of my Btrfs subvolumes is very quick. I can update the remote HD in a couple minutes.


I've stopped visiting social sites but if you want a free speech site, sort of like Twitter, that does NOT censor any position on any issue then Minds.com or gab.com are two. Be prepared to run into lots of flat earthers, luddites and Nazis. You can block them and they can't bother you. I dropped out of those sites because most issues seem to be beyond civil discussion any more. That's why I like this site, civility remains even if opinions differ. BiteChute is only a marginal replacement for YT, and they don't compress their files so they don't load as fast.


I use the following hosts file: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts with small changes because of my IPv6 tunnel. It does a superb job of blocking ads and malware servers. There are some on github which update automatically: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts That's one of several. You will be amazed at how much faster your browser works when it doesn't have to connect to a dozen different ad servers for each page it displays. There are some sites that block you if you block their ads. I avoid those sites. THe StevenBlack hosts file has 1,400+ references to google and its ad.google.* sites. The host file blocks tracking cookies too.

IF I feel the need for a VPN I use Tor instead, and constantly change my three go-between servers when I switch sites. Tor was interesting when I was exploring onion sites but visiting those sites is like walking through Baghdad at night, unarmed.

I use Thunderbird for Email. I used to make a Kgpg key and armor my emails but I stopped doing that. I let my encryption key expire. There's nothing I send that needs to be encrypted because I don't send sensitive information by mail. In fact, nothing I know, do or have would be of any interest to anyone else but me. I gave everything of value or keepsake to my kids, if they wanted them, when we sold our house and moved into an apartment. Of the more than 30 50 gallon garbage bags of "stuff" left over after our yard sale, 13 went to Good Will and the rest went to the landfill. Everything we took with us will probably end up in the landfill as well after we are gone because the kids show no interest in having it.

IF I needed an encrypted link to someone else I'd install Freenet and have them do the same, then create a private encrypted tunnel using the blockchain for security. You could run Mumble between the two or more sites and have voice communication. Or, relay chat msgs.

[TWPonKubuntu]

I forgot to mention; I also use the NoScript Add On in Palemoon. Be warned, the devs on Palemoon are against NoScript because (they claim) it causes problems for their users. I've not experienced those problems and I find that NoScript does a good job of blocking scripts. You should expect to take active control of your browser and NOT just allow websites to feed their scripts; Trust But Verify.

I also have uBlock Origin installed on my browser. I generally don't bother to configure it for every site that I visit regularly because NoScript does that job well enough.

One caveat with Palemoon, they use an earlier Firefox version which is still under the ESR service clause. They do that to avoid using ANY of the newer Web Extensions (WE). Hence you may want to install an extension and find that it is not supported by Palemoon, or you may need to use an earlier version (XUL) of a particular Add On. Some research may be needed on your part to find the right Add On. Be warned, some Add Ons simply are not going to work with Palemoon. I can live with this for what I do with my browser. YMMV.

[whatthefunk]

I always recommend Fastmail as an alternative to Gmail. Its a paid mail service, but the three dollars a month I pay them is well worth the service. The interface is simple and intuitive (why I left Yahoo mail), they don't scan your emails or show advertisements (why I left Gmail), they have pretty good spam filters and custom mail folders, and they allow me to receive and send email from addresses other than the account address via smtp. I've been with them for almost a decade now and have no complaints at all.

[woodsmoke]

What I'm looking for is alternatives to major sites/services like facebook ...

So maybe this thread can grow into something useful for others in the same situation. I'm hoping the KFN community has some useful suggestions, please.

Welll my friend you have come to the right place and made the correct post but I am afraid that it was tried and dropped for lack of development muscle.

There was, a long time ago and far far away in the future... a distro named Klikit...That was ummmm 2007ish..

It went by the by for quite a few reasons but as a side project there was a real attempt to produce a new, open source, alternative to Facebook.

I have posted elsewhere in this august forum that if Canonical had put some effort into it instead of other fly by night things that "Linux" would have READY NOW...

And alternate to FB which, I think, WOULD be used by a significant number of people, speaking world wide, and that they would, because they would actively WANT to be using it, pay a very small fee or at least watch adverts which would be...

A SIGNIFICANT source of income for a distro or for Canonical.

One MUST think out of the box on this...

It would not be cumudgenly "Linuxy geeky CLI types" using it it would be WINDBLOWS users who REGULARLY PAY MONEY... for a lot of stuff

The "problems" with it were:

a) lack of development power

b) an absolutely TURGID interface which was very off-putting..Mastodon, in the list below looks remarkably similar to it.

c) a lack of ...don't know...ability to "link into other stuff" which was probably because it never really had the oomph to get that far.

d) but I think that the REAL problem is that Linux people just do not "GROK" the message behind Marshall McLuhan's books like Understanding Media and "Medium is the Massage".

If Canonical would get at least a little bit away from having to control each and every little iota of something and actually contract with someone to develop the interface and "tone" " look and feel" of it that at least several hundred thousand people would jump on it if the basics were there which are...

I mean LOOK at that horrid color scheme for Mastodon... and compare it to FB... Mastodon is "to geeks" very dark and metallic and "cool"...but FB is all bright and airy and WHITE...which is CHEAP... but...again...

When in Rome think as the Romans do and if it looks like FB users like a bright airy interface then so be it..
e) "fiddly stuff"...

the people who are on the phone, nowadays, not so much the computer, want to "fiddle" with stuff, and by that, I mean that they want to have emojies to put into their posts, be able to easily link to pictures on the phone of their tramp stamps or horrid selfies , play a few games, although I admit that i have never played any game on FB, have "groups" that can be closed etc.

I have a link to the latest and a couple of them have, indeed, pointed the GUI to a cellphone...Ello and Vero being what look to be very nice ones.

The problem THEN is that a lot of people do not want to use it as a "private thing"...they LIKE getting friends on it etc. and building the "following" and... a lot of that is interaction by reposing ad nauseum all those videos of dogs and cats and Russian truck drivers doing stupid stuff and also there is a whole industry of people doing REAL stuff like how to make a crochet cap or a table with a glass river on it and they are there because of the millions of users so they would not probably get onto it so

one is "stuck" with messaging a small group, keeping in touch, etc. which is what Linux people want.

And...I really DO think that a significant number of the present FB users really DO want what Linux people want they just don't know it...

so...yeah...interesting trip down memory lane for the old woodsmoker

and...you might just stir something up and get something going if you want..and "grow it into something useful for others"...dunno...just sayin'.

And...it would need some REAL advertising paid by Canonical to get it out to the public on the chance that it would make more money in the offing...

it is all about the "churning around of people"...but then...it would also need some kind of...overarching moderation to not end up in precisely the quagmire that FB is in.

https://fossbytes.com/best-facebook-alternatives/

woodgoodthoughtsmymansmoke

[jpenguin]

I use duckduckgo as search
I still have a Gmail account, but I use fastmail & posteo for most of my emails
I am moving my dropbox folder to pcloud, I have a Mega account as well

Posteo is a euro a month

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