Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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This is kind of my point. I don't feel there's a happy middle right now and unless you go tinfoil hat information is going to get out.
My threat model is basically "do my best to be as private as possible". But there is limits. I can spend $100 cash on gas or I can spend $100 on my credit card and get 2% back. Obviously I'm going to use my credit card. I still email people who use Gmail, People who have the facebook, instagram, X, etc on their phone has me as a contact, likely with my full name, email address, physical mailing address.
So why do I bother keeping my contacts in a selfhosted NextCloud? Why do I avoid the Google Maps app, or anything google when the wife uses all this stuff and I'm with her 90% of the time? I'm starting to think they have my information already anyway so why not welcome google into my life? I have to keep talking myself into the fact that self hosting is worth the extra work I'm causing myself.
Unfortunately it depends on the individual, so no one can really answer your question but yourself. For me, I draw the line when it personally becomes burdensome to maintain something. For example, I use Bitwarden to manage all my passwords, but I don't trust myself enough to host and maintain a server and keep it online/secure, so I use their hosted service. I use google drive to store some miscellaneous stuff because of the free 15GB storage, but I don't store any private files (personal photos, documents, etc.). I use ProtonDrive for more important stuff, and for very confidential files, I encrypt them first. I use google maps for navigation because of reliability and accuracy, but I use a separate google account for it. I know that doesn't do much, but it keeps some level of separation for me personally. I still maintain a facebook account (although I barely use it) because of family, but I still use a facebook container on firefox and don't use the mobile app. That plus all the privacy extensions.
The main thing is that it doesn't have to be black or white. You don't have to go full hermit, and at the same time you don't need to fully embed yourself into the google ecosystem. Just do what you can and what you are comfortable with. As they say, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
For me it boils down to principles. You're totally right and many companies I hate will have alot of my info due to others, but I'll be damned if I cooperate with them.