I started a 5-week degoogle challenge Signal group.
The group is free…and already has 45 members ready to go next week when we officially start! We’ll follow the checklist here. It will be a casual group for accountability and support.
I can help based on my experiences, we can all support each other, and we have at least 1-2 advanced techie people who can answer more complicated questions.
Please join, and tell your friends! Next week I’ll post an official welcome and resources…and we’ll get started.
If it goes well, I can either start another one and/move to de-Amazon, Meta, Apple, whatever.
(Also, if anyone wants to repost this in r/privacy on Reddit, please do! I apparently don’t have enough karma to post there.)
Hmm, the order of those steps is a little weird. I would expect disabling ad tracking and such to be first. I also think it’s odd that SMS wasn’t mentioned, is this an iPhone guide?
Thank you from a Lemmy newbie.
When my Android tablet wouldn’t let me do anything unless I was logged in to Google, I
ditchedgifted it away. Albeit, I like my apple phone, iCloud syncing has screwed me before so I don’t use any of the stock apps. I went full-on Proton (mail, calendar, drive, etc.). I also have a separate email alias FOR EACH account courtesy of DuckDuckGo. It’s been a few years since I’ve had this setup and I have no regrets.The default browser on my phone is DuckDuckGo only because it has “Duck Player” for YouTube videos. I also have both Firefox browsers, Brave and Startpage (I still have Safari but don’t use it).
Yes, I’ve been using EHDs and USBs since I learned how to use a computer and will do so for the rest of my life. I highly recommend it (redundancy, offline use, Cloudflare chaos).
I wanted to join your de-google team but I don’t have a Signal account (due to the phone number requirement). Speaking of phone numbers, TextNow was my Google voice replacement until the latest update logged me out and demanded that I take down my VPN and subscribe to theirs instead. Such audacity. App deleted and subscribed to MySudo just to have an additional phone number
Instead of Signal we’ve been using Session (The Loki Project). It doesn’t require a phone number to sign up which was my selling point to my fam/friends. My nieces/nephews use Simple X chat (no phone number required).
The Proton Blog has an article about privacy and big tech alternatives which is how I discovered Lemmy:
Wary of US surveillance? Try these European alternatives to Big Tech
Having read your post, I wish that I properly deleted my Google and TextNow accounts instead of just abandoning them. I look forward to learning more. Thanks again.
Thanks for your comment! I’m fairly new at this myself…I started degoogling, etc. maybe 2-3 years ago.
If it helps, this article has info on a service that lets you buy throwaway numbers for verifying accounts. I used it once and it worked, and cost only a couple bucks: How to Verify an Account Without Using Your Real Phone Number
I think you only need your number to verify Signal, right? If that’s the case, this could work. (Or can you use your MySudo number?) I hope it helps, and hope to see you in the group!
I’ve already left most of that. But I still have an Android phone that can’t survive without most of that.
NFC payments, wearables.
Getting rid of my custom domain workspace OAuth is a freaking nightmare.
Sounds like you are a lot more advanved than me!
I already joined it, maybe I will help someone or learn something new
Thank you!
I suggest to explain what " 5-week degoogle challenge" actually mean.
Does it mean people who join have 5 weeks to remove Google from their lives? If so how?
Hi there! We’ll be following the checklist I linked to in the main post. It will be very casual, and we’ll all just do the best we can!
Think im ahead of the curve on this one, but I applaud you! keep doing it.
Appreciate it! If this goes well I might do a de-Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, or something else…or run this one again.
