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> Google can be as evil as Facebook Personally I believe Google _IS_ much worse than FB for one simple reason: it's much easier to avoid FB than Google. With

> Google can be as evil as Facebook Personally I believe Google _IS_ much worse than FB for one simple reason: it's much easier to avoid FB than Google. With FB the story is simple. You'll miss out on some news/invites from FB-centric friends, but it's pretty easy to go without (or to even find new friends who aren't as hooked on FB as needed). "Avoiding" Google in your daily life is much, much harder. Their free mail offering is still top-notch. Their search is absolutely incredible. Depending on what you do this list can go on and on. Also, these are things we can't really just "do without" like in FB's case. Alternatives do exist, but often are either paid or not as good. Personally, I'n going to try and transition away from Google this year just to see how far I can get. Should be an interesting experiment.

fao_ 9y ago
Some personal recommendations from a random Hacker News: For mail I recommend: inventati.org (And if you use them please donate to them!) For search I recommend: duckduckgo.com (Spend some time using the bang syntax-- such as !w for wikipedia pages --it makes life about 10x easier! For maps I recommend: openstreetmaps.org There are more on https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
If I can affect just one person here today... Please please please stop using Gmail for important communication and account recovery (banking, mission critical services you maintain, etc etc). Use a paid service from a reputable company who does that one thing only and does it well. Too many Gmail horror stories.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  "Too many Gmail horror stories." share one pls?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Someone hijacked an older google account of mine, the phone number used had since run out and been sold to another user. Google asked me to either have access to the phone number, and the old password, or to know the security question, have access to the backup email, and know the exact day the account was created on. Google was not willing to provide any help, not even via the Nexus phone support, and even after a friend who worked at Google submitted an internal recovery form. After I contacted the new owner of the phone number, and coordinated with him a way for me to authorize via SMS, backup email, old password, security question, and account creation date at the same time, I got back into the account. In the account I found an email from Google's account recovery support thanking me for contacting them, apparently they had contacted the hijacker after I asked for help, not me. After changing all data, I went through the login history. The account was set to German, always used from Germany. Someone tried logging in via several different VPNs, and was blocked a few times, but allowed the last time from Russia. I had learnt the account was compromised originally because Google sent me an email that an attacker from Russia had logged into the account and changed the password. So, to recap: Google realizes that an attacker connects and hijacks an account, emails me, but doesn't prevent it. Google allows that person to change the password, and tells me that an attacker changed the password, but provides no way to restore it, and doesn't block it. You can't restore with backup email, security question and old password. Once Google's internal account recovery team was contacted, they talked with the attacker, not with me, despite being explicitly told I had no control over the account. A random person was more helpful with restoring the account than Google itself. Do NOT ever rely on Google, and write down your accountcreation date right now (on desktop, in gmail, settings, pop3 and imap, "pop3 active since" tells you the account creation date)
    - hutzlibu 9y ago
      hm, definitely incompetence from the google team, but also a bit your fault, since you did not update your number. Why did the backup email not worked? Or did they told you about the hijacking via the backup but said the only way to restore is via the number?
      - kuschku 9y ago
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    Many stories have been posted here over the years of people whose Google accounts got disabled for some unknown reason, with no way of contacting someone at Google to get the issue resolved. A quick web search turned up this example: https://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2012-04-13/how-i-lost-access-my-google-account-today https://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2012-04-13/how-i-lost-access-m...
- nytesky 9y ago
  Can you recommend a paid email service that is reputable?
  - dbrgn 9y ago
    I can recommend Fastmail. No affiliation, just a happy customer. I've used Gmail for several years previously and thought I'd miss it when switching. I didn't.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      I also use Fastmail. No affiliations, just a content customer. I pay for a mobile telephone service, but email is more important to me so my convictions necessitate a paid email service from a dedicated provider with a real support team. I also own my own domain, primarily because now my email address is short and unambiguous to say over the phone.
  - newscracker 9y ago
    Late reply, but I would recommend Posteo [1] because it's flexible and very cheap if you need multiple accounts. I switched to it a year ago to move out of Gmail and other "free" services. Fastmail is, for my needs of a few mailboxes (each with its own credentials), very expensive - running into few hundred dollars a year! Another similar and cheap alternative is Mailbox, which allows custom domains to be used. Both the services allow IMAP, which was very important for me to have local copies of emails if I ever decide to migrate out. [1]: https://posteo.de https://posteo.de [2]: https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org
xj9 9y ago
it really isn't that hard to get away from GOOG I run copperhead on a nexus device (no gapps) use fastmail for email contacts and calendars duckduckgo for search plex and icecast for media matrix for chat mastodon for social media fix standard notes for note taking YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously the only missing but for me is replacing photos. Plex does and ok job, but it isn't quite as seamless as I would like.
- severine 9y ago
  > YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously Check the Video Assistant extension to play embedded videos in external player: https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/video-assistant/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/video-assistant/
- thrwyqwerty 9y ago
  Newpipe is a great Youtube alternative for Android. You can download it from the Fdroid repo.

fao_ 9y ago

Some personal recommendations from a random Hacker News: For mail I recommend: inventati.org (And if you use them please donate to them!) For search I recommend: duckduckgo.com (Spend some time using the bang syntax-- such as !w for wikipedia pages --it makes life about 10x easier! For maps I recommend: openstreetmaps.org There are more on https://www.privacytools.io/ https://www.privacytools.io/

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

If I can affect just one person here today... Please please please stop using Gmail for important communication and account recovery (banking, mission critical services you maintain, etc etc). Use a paid service from a reputable company who does that one thing only and does it well. Too many Gmail horror stories.

hutzlibu 9y ago
"Too many Gmail horror stories." share one pls?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Someone hijacked an older google account of mine, the phone number used had since run out and been sold to another user. Google asked me to either have access to the phone number, and the old password, or to know the security question, have access to the backup email, and know the exact day the account was created on. Google was not willing to provide any help, not even via the Nexus phone support, and even after a friend who worked at Google submitted an internal recovery form. After I contacted the new owner of the phone number, and coordinated with him a way for me to authorize via SMS, backup email, old password, security question, and account creation date at the same time, I got back into the account. In the account I found an email from Google's account recovery support thanking me for contacting them, apparently they had contacted the hijacker after I asked for help, not me. After changing all data, I went through the login history. The account was set to German, always used from Germany. Someone tried logging in via several different VPNs, and was blocked a few times, but allowed the last time from Russia. I had learnt the account was compromised originally because Google sent me an email that an attacker from Russia had logged into the account and changed the password. So, to recap: Google realizes that an attacker connects and hijacks an account, emails me, but doesn't prevent it. Google allows that person to change the password, and tells me that an attacker changed the password, but provides no way to restore it, and doesn't block it. You can't restore with backup email, security question and old password. Once Google's internal account recovery team was contacted, they talked with the attacker, not with me, despite being explicitly told I had no control over the account. A random person was more helpful with restoring the account than Google itself. Do NOT ever rely on Google, and write down your accountcreation date right now (on desktop, in gmail, settings, pop3 and imap, "pop3 active since" tells you the account creation date)
  - hutzlibu 9y ago
    hm, definitely incompetence from the google team, but also a bit your fault, since you did not update your number. Why did the backup email not worked? Or did they told you about the hijacking via the backup but said the only way to restore is via the number?
    - kuschku 9y ago
- greenyoda 9y ago
  Many stories have been posted here over the years of people whose Google accounts got disabled for some unknown reason, with no way of contacting someone at Google to get the issue resolved. A quick web search turned up this example: https://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2012-04-13/how-i-lost-access-my-google-account-today https://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2012-04-13/how-i-lost-access-m...
nytesky 9y ago
Can you recommend a paid email service that is reputable?
- dbrgn 9y ago
  I can recommend Fastmail. No affiliation, just a happy customer. I've used Gmail for several years previously and thought I'd miss it when switching. I didn't.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    I also use Fastmail. No affiliations, just a content customer. I pay for a mobile telephone service, but email is more important to me so my convictions necessitate a paid email service from a dedicated provider with a real support team. I also own my own domain, primarily because now my email address is short and unambiguous to say over the phone.
- newscracker 9y ago
  Late reply, but I would recommend Posteo [1] because it's flexible and very cheap if you need multiple accounts. I switched to it a year ago to move out of Gmail and other "free" services. Fastmail is, for my needs of a few mailboxes (each with its own credentials), very expensive - running into few hundred dollars a year! Another similar and cheap alternative is Mailbox, which allows custom domains to be used. Both the services allow IMAP, which was very important for me to have local copies of emails if I ever decide to migrate out. [1]: https://posteo.de https://posteo.de [2]: https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org

xj9 9y ago

it really isn't that hard to get away from GOOG I run copperhead on a nexus device (no gapps) use fastmail for email contacts and calendars duckduckgo for search plex and icecast for media matrix for chat mastodon for social media fix standard notes for note taking YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously the only missing but for me is replacing photos. Plex does and ok job, but it isn't quite as seamless as I would like.

severine 9y ago
> YouTube is a challenge, but you can always use youtube-dl and watch via plex asynchronously Check the Video Assistant extension to play embedded videos in external player: https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/video-assistant/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/video-assistant/
thrwyqwerty 9y ago
Newpipe is a great Youtube alternative for Android. You can download it from the Fdroid repo.