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leaving google
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Privacy Guides
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What are you not sure about the Android telemetry? Or what problems in this field do you expect without a Google account?
And also courious, what type of signing does Gmail provide that others don't? You mean PGP or S/MIME?
I dont know what I can do about android without break and about gmail its signed in everywhere that I used like steam, and every other important app that you can think, and tutanota is good but mostly paid(I think so)
Skiff is another option to replace Gmail, it has 10 Gb free storage.
For Android check out this website: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/android/#operating-systems
Make sure you don't depend on features like email clients. You also can't use encryption like PGP so, that will mean that you'll only have E2EE if you're sending to other Skiff users. (There is no external E2EE with Skiff).
GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, etc
This is a very effective way to ensure your activity is tracked by Google across the web.
Delete your accounts. Get a relay service (Firefox Relay, SimpleLogin, AnonAddy, etc.). Create new accounts with alias emails.
Get a password manager (1Password, BitWarden, Proton Pass). Save your alias, username and unique password in the manager.
That should be a good start.
I'm not sure that /e/ is as degoogled as you might think:
We do think their phones are very pricey for what they are and not nearly as secure as something like GrapheneOS, ie lack of verified boot etc. Their cloud service is also not E2EE as far as I can tell, which you'd really expect from a "privacy service".
Better to focus on using good products than be obsessive about Google.
Also suggest reading this: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/common-misconceptions/#complicated-is-better
For "known identity" do not use cloaking services, you'll end up banned. Amazon does this for example.
I'm still on gmail. It's one of the few services I genuinely think google is still doing correctly.
But, a good way to switch, would be to get another email address, then link it to gmail, or gmail to it (via smpt and pop3/imap) and slowly start swithing all your stuff over while using both for while. The link will bring everything into one single inbox for you.
I still have two pre-gmail inboxes routes ilto my gmail this way, they never get mail anymore, but you don't need to entirely cut those inboxes off.
"Still doing correctly"? They are very generous with their space allowance and you gotta wonder why. I haven't read the privacy policy, but I wouldn't be surprised if every email you receive, everything you buy, every account you own is feeding into advertising profiles about you as a user.
It definitely is. That was the deal you made to use gmail, that's been the case since the start. The user agreement is very up front about that.
What I mean is, is that where gmail is concerned, that trade is still one I'm willing to make. It provides enough for me to agree to hand over the snapshot of me that is my email traffic.
With chrome, not so much. Chrome does very little to provide me with some kind of value other browsers dont, and yet it asks for everything I do online. Not just the account confirmation messages I use my email to receive. Gmail can see if I have pornhub account. Chrome can log every webpage I've ever opened. There's a difference.
Email is central for all online activity, and google is really good at it, and provides it for "free", at a rate that's "competitive".
A lot of googles other services, very much aren't.
No, they do not read your email, they're very clear about this, that is mostly FUD pushed by privacy providers who lack ethical marketing standards.
The place where Google makes the money is on the sites you visit with Google Adsense and your search terms being associated with a logged in Google account. Most people want to stay logged into their email (and thus their Google account), so that's where the behavioral/adsense analytics comes in. Much fewer people use email clients these days.
"we do not process email content to serve ads" looks very specific. We don't process emails to serve you ads. It doesn't say they don't process ads to understand better what is relevent to you. It is also a very specific word, serve. Serving means displaying, but it doesn't necessarily mean profiling or targetting.
Ads are shown based on: "ads that were selected to be the most useful and relevant for you". So, they're saying they don't directly do that, but it doesn't cover indirect processing that would feed into this.
These people are very clever, and hire very clever lawyers that could easily demonstrate this in a court, so they could use that information and still meet the requirements of the policy.
Considering the astounding level of information gained from Android that feeds into their tech, it would be quite naive to believe they've ring fenced email as something they don't touch. Google still serve very relevant content to people that don't use search and don't stay logged into email. I cannot imagine it's a fluke. Email is a very expensive game to be in when you're insinuating that all they want is to be an identity provider to assist in tracking web interactions.
I always understood it as they don't parse the actual details of emails (the body) to generate an add profile. It doesn't mean they don't track what websites you're visiting whilst logged in though.
My guess to this is that it's not accurate, for example email chains, or someone mentioning something that you have no intention of buying. As the email body is very unstructured it would be quite difficult to interpret whether those keywords should be added as an interest, having said that, with advanced AI that can parse context of a sentence they may just start doing that again if they can with accuracy.
If you've got your own server imapfilter is perfect for this.
It can periodically log into multiple accounts and move/delete do anything with emails.
One thing Proton does really well is filters. Google is, comparatively, an absolute nightmare, and they should be embarrassed.
phase out Google account sign-in slowly by signing in to those accounts with an email address instead. It takes weeks maybe, but then you're free. A password manager like keepass helps