DeGoogle Yourself

Are there any FOSS/selfhostable alternatives to Google Alerts? I like the ability to aggregate results from across the Internet and save the alert as an RSS link.

I’m looking into Firefox alternatives as I wanna see what’s available. Being Norwegian, Vivaldi seems like a good choice to replace Firefox on desktop and Safari on iOS. Tried it for a night and it works pretty good. I do however have reservations about it being based on Chromium.

How much power does Google actually have over Vivaldi? And would it actually matter for my quest for degoogling myself?

In case anyone’s wondering. I’m also looking into LibreWolf.

Edit: Rewrote the start as people got too hung up on Firefox.

I'm slowly ditching Google lately. Always on the lookout for better options, so lemme know what you're using! 👌

I feel like a version of this guide gets reposted weekly, but it's always out of date.

u/theFallenWalnut over on that other site updates these regularly.

They also now link to !purchasewithpurpose@lemmy.world but I don't see anything posted there. Maybe a better place to start reposting these

I wanted to list and ask for platforms that can substitute YouTube.

Here it's:

• NASA+, Space and Astronomy Videos.
• Vimeo, Professional Videos and Documentaries.
• TED, Talks and presentations.
• PeerTube, there is not a lot of videos, but some creators upload there.
• ARTE, Euro documantries and analysis.
• RedBull TV, Sports related videos.
• RTE Player, Journalism.
• BBC videos, diverse topics.
• NFB Films, Canadian Films.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27344091

1. Persistent Device Identifiers

My id is (1 digit changed to preserve my privacy):

38400000-8cf0-11bd-b23e-30b96e40000d

Android assigns Advertising IDs, unique identifiers that apps and advertisers use to track users across installations and account changes. Google explicitly states:

“The advertising ID is a unique, user-resettable ID for advertising, provided by Google Play services. It gives users better controls and provides developers with a simple, standard system to continue to monetize their apps.” Source: Google Android Developer Documentation

This ID allows apps to rebuild user profiles even after resets, enabling persistent tracking.

2. Tracking via Cookies

Android’s web and app environments rely on cookies with unique identifiers. The W3C (web standards body) confirms:

“HTTP cookies are used to identify specific users and improve their web experience by storing session data, authentication, and tracking information.” Source: W3C HTTP State Management Mechanism https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2109/rfc2109

Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative further admits cookies are used for cross-site tracking:

“Third-party cookies have been a cornerstone of the web for decades… but they can also be used to track users across sites.” Source: Google Privacy Sandbox https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/

3. Ad-Driven Data Collection

Google’s ad platforms, like AdMob, collect behavioral data to refine targeting. The FTC found in a 2019 settlement:

“YouTube illegally harvested children’s data without parental consent, using it to target ads to minors.” Source: FTC Press Release https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-settlement-over-claims

A 2022 study by Aarhus University confirmed:

“87% of Android apps share data with third parties.” Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3534593

4. Device Fingerprinting

Android permits fingerprinting by allowing apps to access device metadata. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns:

“Even when users reset their Advertising ID, fingerprinting techniques combine static device attributes (e.g., OS version, hardware specs) to re-identify them.” Source: EFF Technical Analysis https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

5. Hardware-Level Tracking

Google’s Titan M security chip, embedded in Pixel devices, operates independently of software controls. Researchers at Technische Universität Berlin noted:

“Hardware-level components like Titan M can execute processes that users cannot audit or disable, raising concerns about opaque data collection.” Source: TU Berlin Research Paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.14442

Regarding Titan M: Lots of its rsearch is being taken down. Very few are remaining online. This is one of them available today.

"In this paper, we provided the first study of the Titan M chip, recently introduced by Google in its Pixel smartphones. Despite being a key element in the security of these devices, no research is available on the subject and very little information is publicly available. We approached the target from different perspectives: we statically reverse-engineered the firmware, we audited the available libraries on the Android repositories, and we dynamically examined its memory layout by exploiting a known vulnerability. Then, we used the knowledge obtained through our study to design and implement a structure-aware black-box fuzzer, mutating valid Protobuf messages to automatically test the firmware. Leveraging our fuzzer, we identified several known vulnerabilities in a recent version of the firmware. Moreover, we discovered a 0-day vulnerability, which we responsibly disclosed to the vendor."

Ref: https://conand.me/publications/melotti-titanm-2021.pdf

6. Notification Overload

A 2021 UC Berkeley study found:

“Android apps send 45% more notifications than iOS apps, often prioritizing engagement over utility. Notifications act as a ‘hook’ to drive app usage and data collection.” Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445589

How can this be used nefariously?

Let's say you are a person who believes in Truth and who searches all over the net for truth. You find some things which are true. You post it somewhere. And you are taken down. You accept it since this is ONLY one time.

But, this is where YOU ARE WRONG.

THEY can easily know your IDs - specifically your advertising ID, or else one of the above. They send this to Google to know which all EMAIL accounts are associated with these IDs. With 99.9% accuracy, AI can know the correct Email because your EMAIL and ID would have SIMULTANEOUSLY logged into Google thousands of times in the past.

Then they can CENSOR you ACROSS the internet - YouTube, Reddit, etc. - because they know your ID. Even if you change your mobile, they still have other IDs like your email, etc. You can't remove all of them. This is how they can use this for CENSORING. (They will shadow ban you, you wont know this.)

I received mail from eures.europa.eu to Gmail for years before Google's new "be evil" act.

Ban Google in EU. Don't let citizens use enemy services in a cold war.

I want to stop using Google translate app to translate text in pictures I take, which is something I often need to do while traveling abroad. Do you guys have any foss app recommendations? Or maybe a website?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27168042

My family has been using the Google Maps location sharing feature for a while. My partner is able to see if I'm running late, I can tell where my sister is when we travel together.

I would like to find a way to continue sharing my location with my family, without sharing it with Google. Are there any apps for this?

Eric Murphy makes good videos regarding internet privacy and they have helped me slowly switch from certain services.

My words of advice: start small and make weekly goals to migrate from services, as some progress is better than no progress.

Yesterday Google bought Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz for $32 billion.

The acquisition will mark the single largest transfer of former Israeli spies into an American company. This is because Wiz is run and staffed by dozens of ex Unit 8200 members, the specialist cyber-spying arm of the IDF.

Unit 8200 wrote the programming and designed the algorithms that automated the genocide of Gaza and was also responsible for the pager attack in Lebanon. Now the men and women who helped design the architecture of apartheid are being swallowed by the US tech-surveillance complex. The identity of the Wiz founders, all former Unit 8200, is fairly well-documented (by Israeli media at least). Less well-documented is the fact that a huge chunk of the Wiz workforce, from office managers, to software engineers to product analysts, are also former Unit 8200. Following my investigation earlier this year into the former Unit 8200 members working in key AI positions for tech companies, I have identified nearly fifty Wiz employees as being ex Unit 8200 operatives.

It’s also worth noting that the Wiz deal represents a huge tax coup for Israel. It will bring around $5 billion dollars in revenue for the war economy, or around 0.6% of Israel’s entire GDP. Zionists have already expressed the benefits in terms of the war planes and missiles it will pay for to conduct genocide.

The valuation is curious, a huge 64x multiple of Wiz’s most recent annual sales. As someone noted, you could buy Delta Airlines or Brazil’s oil company Petrobras for this money and have change left over. The overpriced valuation is likely as much about politics as economics. Google is heavily invested in Israel. It opened offices there nearly 20 years ago, has bought a number of Israeli start-up tech companies in recent years, and former CEO Eric Schmidt has cosied up to Netanyahu on numerous occasions over the years. All the key figures at Google and its mother company, Alphabet, are proud Zionists. From Schmidt to current CEO Sundar Pichai to founder Sergey Brin to Anat Ashkenazi, the chief financial officer of Alphabet. At a time when Israel’s economy is faltering, the country is experiencing an outflow of people, the IDF can’t win in Gaza and Netanyahu is in deep trouble, the Wiz deal provides a much needed tonic. It helps paper over the economic and political cracks in the country and acts as a vote of confidence in Israel’s early-stage technology sector, the only sector of the Israeli economy that produces anything of note.

Without the Unit 8200-to-tech-startup pipeline, Israel’s economy would be screwed.

The Wiz deal then looks like a favour from Google to Netanyahu. It keeps a critical business sector for Israel ticking over and provides a reassuring sense of business-as-usual in a blood-soaked land.

Hello! I recently switched to LineageOS and have been enjoying it fine. However, certain apps just refuse to work without engoogling them, sadly, and I need help doing it without making my entire phone a google-shaped target.

I've tried installing the apk's manually or getting them through Aurora (once I got that to work), but no dice, they invariably give me some error code at the last hurdle, seemingly indicating a reliance on the services I'm trying not to install.

The alternative is keeping my SIM-less old phone around, the apps still work. I'm not sure how, considering they're tied to my phone number. I don't need those apps every day, so it wouldn't be a huge bother, I'm just worried it'll stop working after a while, and then I'm SOL.

I've been using Waze for the past year but I just looked it up and realised that it's also owned by Google. I tried using OsmAnd yesterday twice, but the first time I went through a tunnel it just stopped giving directions when I came out of the tunnel (a bug I assume). The second time on the way home, it took me down the wrong exit and I almost ended up at the airport!

Anybody have a better experience with other apps? I've just installed Organic Maps so I'll see how that goes this week.

Is using vivaldi instead of chrome considered degoogling? I have heard that it uses chromium as its engine, but I want to know whats the downside of that? Does it diretcly bring money to google by using a chromium based browser? Does google somehow collect data from it?

I'm looking for a wireless HDMI cable essentially, as that's the only way I use my chromecast. So I don't care about it running android or apps.

Anyone got ideas or suggestions?

DDG, to its credit, behaves like search engines used to, that is you just get results, not "answers" however for all the ways they annoy, Google has over the years made advances where "answers" actually are what I want.

Specifically, google search integrates very well with google maps so if I type the name of a business, the first thing I see is a formatted, sanitised presentation of the information I actually want from the business' website that is so rarely even on the site or at least not easy to find there: Where they are and when they open. DDG will usually find me the business' website if they have one and that's good and what you'd expect of a search engine but it takes much longer to go to that page, navigate through all the places they might have hidden that information only to discover they don't in fact include it at all anyway.

Is there any way to get that basic information very fast like Google has always provided? I'm talking specifically about browser based searches because this usually comes up when I'm using desktop, and even on my phone I don't want to open or obtain another app just for this.

Do you know if there is an alternative to GoogleTV or AndroidTV as the OS on the TV set? I've seen one or two projects but those are more oriented towards TV boxes rather than the television device itself.

I would like to replace the one that comes preinstalled, as as far as I have detected is turns on on low power every now and then to, and this is a guess, phone home for updates. I have connected it once to my wifi, and after that it updated itself and started to lag.

I would like it to connect to my network and play my local media streams, but I don't like the idea of it going to the vendor's cloud. I have it now disconnected from the network, but it would be nice not to depend on another device just to enjoy my arrchives

Edit: I am not looking for some solution to connect to the tv and stream, I have that covered. I am asking to replace the preinstalled OS on the tv and use it without needing external devices.

Title. There's just some websites I want to permanently blacklist for my DuckDuckGo searches, and don't want to type in a boolean function every time I search something.

I'm looking for an alternative option to video chat and stream Jackbox games with my family.

Currently when we play, I set up a video chat on meet that family members join via laptops and then I connect a separate computer that shares its screen and audio from the running game.

Features I'm interested in:

• Cheap/No cost
• Easily to access (web based ideally)
• Shares computer screen and audio
• Unlimited/long meeting time (sometimes we play for up to 3 hours)

Does something like this exist?

Edit: We had a successful game last weekend using Jitsi Meet. Everyone was able to connect and we played for 3 1/2 hours. Jackbox audio and video went through nicely.

I've switched my email etc. to https://infomaniak.com/

I'm planning on move all my media out of google photos but I really like the ability to search by a persons face, or to search "Dog" and then it'll show me all my pictures with dogs in them.

I have 100k photos, so having search functionality like this is curtail.

Is there a European alternative to Apple FindMy or GoogleMaps location tracking that allows you to share your location with each other?

I would be very grateful for any tips.