I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it’s hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.
I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It’s kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it’s even worth having you on).
As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I’m not sure how we’d even start reeling it back in.
you don’t have to go all in at once, mate. you can start by getting most important things in your control: your browser and search engine.
if you like the interface of Google chrome and can’t part away with it: use brave. else highly recommended to use Firefox.
if you just like Google search results, use startpage, else use duckduckgo or brave search.
these two things alone would make a meaningful difference.
then for neutering most of third party tracking: use a private DNS(I’d suggest nextdns). it’s just a "add a URL and forget about it’. it’ll stop the tracking significantly.
then you can continue by replacing other inconsequential stuff like Google notes(use Joplin), Google assistant(don’t use any of this “smart” crap), Google fit(just exercise regularly. you don’t need to micromanage it).
then next step would be to start making some tough decisions: replace the keylogger that is Google keyboard with it’s open source equivalent heliboard.
then eventually you can go hardcore and use Facebook and other crap on browser only.
so, all in all, even if you do only the first two(or just first) step, you’re already 50% there.
let me know in case you got any questions. and happy journey.
Quick question why are you so sure that startpage, duckduckgo or brave are not tracking your data ? As far as I’m concerned they need to make money too there is no such thing as free shit. Also even if they are more private and don’t track your date if the search is not giving the results you want/need it’s not really a good search engine, I’m saying this as a few years back I tried duckduckgo and it was so bad at that point at giving results I wanted/needed that even bing was doing a better job.
because they don’t serve you targeted ads. duckduckgo’s(and startpage’s) business model is keyword-based ads, for which they are getting plenty of revenue.
brave has other paid offerings like search without ads(premium), brave VPN, their own shitcoin(BAT) and so on.
as for the search results, I’m a software developer. most of the time I know what I am searching for, and I don’t want my search engine to go on overdrive and interpret it as something else. for me, duckduckgo is perfect. google, on the other hand, is worse for me for this and other reasons.
and there shouldn’t be much difference between duckduckgo and bing(sans account) since duckduckgo sources the results from bing.
I don’t know when did you last try duckduckgo, but I’ve been using it since 2015 and I’ve rarely been disappointed. in case i am missing on something, it’s just a !sp away(duckduckgo bangs).
Maybe you can help me out.
I see lots of folks here who are programmers or have a ton of knowledge on ways to get around the big 5 to maintain privacy, but as a layman with only so much time in the day, it’s hard to avoid taking the path of least resistance when using the Internet.
I am a musician with a public profile on Instagram, and many of my friends who are also artists use TikTok or YouTube to get their exposure. It’s kind of a necessity if you want to simply book a gig at a venue (they will ask for your social media handles to see how many followers you have to determine if it’s even worth having you on).
As artists we are also not flush with cash to pay for all the privacy software or VPNs. On top of that, so much of our information is already out there, I’m not sure how we’d even start reeling it back in.
you don’t have to go all in at once, mate. you can start by getting most important things in your control: your browser and search engine.
if you like the interface of Google chrome and can’t part away with it: use brave. else highly recommended to use Firefox.
if you just like Google search results, use startpage, else use duckduckgo or brave search.
these two things alone would make a meaningful difference.
then for neutering most of third party tracking: use a private DNS(I’d suggest nextdns). it’s just a "add a URL and forget about it’. it’ll stop the tracking significantly.
then you can continue by replacing other inconsequential stuff like Google notes(use Joplin), Google assistant(don’t use any of this “smart” crap), Google fit(just exercise regularly. you don’t need to micromanage it).
then next step would be to start making some tough decisions: replace the keylogger that is Google keyboard with it’s open source equivalent heliboard.
then eventually you can go hardcore and use Facebook and other crap on browser only.
so, all in all, even if you do only the first two(or just first) step, you’re already 50% there.
let me know in case you got any questions. and happy journey.
Quick question why are you so sure that startpage, duckduckgo or brave are not tracking your data ? As far as I’m concerned they need to make money too there is no such thing as free shit. Also even if they are more private and don’t track your date if the search is not giving the results you want/need it’s not really a good search engine, I’m saying this as a few years back I tried duckduckgo and it was so bad at that point at giving results I wanted/needed that even bing was doing a better job.
because they don’t serve you targeted ads. duckduckgo’s(and startpage’s) business model is keyword-based ads, for which they are getting plenty of revenue.
brave has other paid offerings like search without ads(premium), brave VPN, their own shitcoin(BAT) and so on.
as for the search results, I’m a software developer. most of the time I know what I am searching for, and I don’t want my search engine to go on overdrive and interpret it as something else. for me, duckduckgo is perfect. google, on the other hand, is worse for me for this and other reasons.
and there shouldn’t be much difference between duckduckgo and bing(sans account) since duckduckgo sources the results from bing.
I don’t know when did you last try duckduckgo, but I’ve been using it since 2015 and I’ve rarely been disappointed. in case i am missing on something, it’s just a
!spaway(duckduckgo bangs).You’re in a career that demands exposure, so you’re going to have to have two different personas - the public one and the private one.
I’m also a layman. Unfortunately, privacy is complicated nowadays so it does require a lot of research.
I would start here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/