Trying to escape Google’s ecosystem, but past purchases keep pulling me back. #DeGoogled #GoogleLockIn #PrivacyStruggles #TechDilemma #FOSS #DigitalFreedom #AndroidAlternatives
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Find the least used paid service and look for an alternative. Start with replacing google drive.What’s with all the hashtags? This isn’t Twitter. Searching #FOSS for example shows a whole of not this with most seemingly only containing the ‘#’ part or FOSS but no ‘#’.
I’ll keep using hashtags for my Lemmy posts. 😄
There is absolutely NOTHING I purchased on the play store that I need. Forget about replacing, i’m genuinely better off without it
Everyone saying you can’t have Graphene and google store apps as a daily driver must have given up day one or had some important app that they needed. I’m about 10 months in now.
Graphene sandboxes all the apps, including google services. Yes, it’d be ideal to ditch google all together but reality makes that not feasible for a lot of people. Which is why graphene went through the effort to makes google services work.
You do have to download Google Services Graphenes own mini “app store”. gmail 2FA works, play store/and restoring purchases works, Android Auto works, push notifications work.
It is true, some apps do not work on graphene. Mostly banking apps with extra security. There is a compatibility mode you can set for the app that reduces Graphene’s restrictions on the app. Sometimes that works.
So in short, yes the meme is true. We are still locked into google one way or another, but at least we don’t have to let them and other apps steal all our data.
You don’t need to run any binaries from Google on your phone, and still get most apps running fine with CalyxOS.
It’s not as hardened as Graphene, but I’m just looking for privacy while still having reliability and functionality.
It’s been 3yrs as a daily, works great with my banks,a few medical applications etc. Tap to pay still doesn’t work, and I don’t want a Google account anyway.
GrapheneOS is great for privacy. But the need for banking apps, working notifications, etc get in the way of me using it for a main device. Plus, there’s the dilemma that in order to fully avoid being tracked by Google, you need to setup a separate user profile on your device for anything that uses Google services (ie if you want to use the playstore even with fake google services). I just switched to using an iphone and use decentralized apps for the most part. But my secondary device has graphene
The thing people often dont realize is that if you do end up caving in and installing Google app services back onto your de-googled phone and logging into your old Google account - well, you’re almost back to square one. Google now ties all the identifiers of that phone/OS to your old Google account and will continue tracking it as much as possible whenever it sees those identifiers accessing anything. So I’d avoid that if your goal is de-Googling, but I understand why some need it as a stop-gap.
I thought the same initially re: sunk costs, but when I actually sat down and made a list of the apps I had on my old phone and what I used them for, I could quickly see that almost half of them were already FOSS. Then checked what alternatives are available for others and realized i could actually replace almost everything. The only premium apps I ended up “needing” were Poweramp*, and a couple others I actually forget now without finding my list. Almost everything can be replaced by using the website as a web link or web app, or using an open source alternative.
A big bonus of that process was seeing on the Aurora Store how many trackers were detected in each of the old apps while i was reviewing them and it was insane. I remember one Sudoku app I’d installed years back had like 16 trackers… Wtf. Checked FOSS options on F-Droid and found several alternatives.
*Poweramp can be bought direct from the developer, no need for Google apps, so I repurchased it via that method so I could avoid using my old account. I don’t mind buying things a second time if the devs have made the facilities available to avoid Google. I recently did the same for Symfonium.
The only ones that stung a bit to abandon was Sleep As Android which I’d paid for (I use their limited free version now and block it on the firewall to prevent ads/tracking); and Sygic (gps app) I’d paid lifetime maps for… I just use Organic Maps now, and while it’s not as fancy it navigates just fine and I use it regularly for car GPS.
Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for but are free (with questionable tracking) you can install as a ‘work profile’ app via Shelter, which means it has no access to your real contacts and personal data, and can be set to auto-freeze (deletes cache and pauses app, keeps personal data). So you can use it and expose minimal data, and it can’t tie it back to a Google account to profile you as it doesn’t see one.
So far I’ve never needed a Google account on this phone, which means it’s been a clean break from Google entirely. 3 years now and very happy with the results.
Things like Shazam that there’s not really a FOSS alternative for
Audire - https://github.com/alexmercerind/audire.
GrapheneOS runs Google play services in a sandbox (rather than as a system level app) and randomizes the advertiser ID, IIRC.
I’m keen to give GrapheneOS a try when I upgrade to my next phone, it’s got some privacy enhancements that CalyxOS doesn’t (my current OS). The sandboxing is cool and every bit of obfuscation helps.
However unless your phone is on an always-on VPN with an IP isolated from your other devices, or you’re in a bulding full of other users to obfuscate your traffic somewhat, then just accessing your Google Play account via the phone will give them your public IP address and they’ll be able to tie that heuristically to your other data/accounts.
Eg scenario: you have a laptop at home, it browses and has a bunch of cookies saved, it uses your public IP. Google is all over the web, inescapable while browsing, and through browser fingerprinting has an advertising profile saved for your device even if you’re not logged into an account, this is often called a ‘shadow profile’. If it sees another device (your phone) on the same network (same internet IP) regularly accessing the same sites - those devices are likely linked in their database as ‘likely same user’, with frequency they will be merged permanently as same user. If you then log into your old Google Play account on the phone - boom, all history for that account is now linked in their database to any other profile identifiers for the shadow profile eg cookies, browser fingerprints etc. They don’t need you to log in multiple times, once is enough to confirm owership of that device & account. Opsec is a cat and mouse game and Google (and the other surveillance capitalism giants) are literally the most valuable businesses in the world because they’re good at tracking users to create personal profiles for them.
I’m very interested in this info; thanks. What OS and phone are you using? Graphene/Pixel? I desperately want to be off of Google. Apple is not an option.
I am going to transition to Infomaniak for cloud (dumping Proton, wtf Proton), but mobile is still a big question for me
Using a Pixel 5 on Calyx OS. I was attracted to CalyxOS and Graphene as they both use a locked bootloader allowing OTA updates and keeping the boot process secure. I’d say either are good choices. I’ve been very happy with CalyxOS, only a few minor issues in the few years I’ve been on it (a tile button not working in one update, that kind of minor stuff).
This phone model is EOL now and only getting security patches, so im on the lookout for a Pixel 8 to move to (going second hand for costs). I’m planning to give GrapheneOS a try for a few weeks when I upgrade as I’ve read good things about it and will have a good yardstick to compare it to now with my time on CalyxOS.
P. S. I think the Proton CEO thing is overstated - he praised an anti-big-tech pick for the (iirc) Assistant Antitrust Attorney General (that is objectively good), and then backed it up saying he is very hopeful this person with a proven track record litigating against big tech will take on their monopolies that have been hindering players like Proton heavily over the years. His statements were always going to be taken poorly though (any Trump action being praised - even if the action was good, is a red flag because Trump is a disaster for a thousand other reasons and people are understandably on edge), and the follow-up comments should never have been done from the official Proton social media account - which is something Proton also stated, and said wouldn’t happen again. Me: OK that’s strike one. I’m not throwing them out after 9 years of very positive work for one failure, I think there’s a tendency in the privacy community to ‘let perfect be the enemy of good’ and for me at least this is an example of that.
Genuine question: What do you spend money on, on a phone? I’ve never bought anything myself and I don’t know what I could even spend money on.
Lifetime subscription to programming learning apps, video editing apps, AI chat and art generator apps, and audio editing tools, which can only be restored by my Google account when I switch to another phone or reset.
microG has several options regarding paid apps, about licensing, billing and stuff. When logging in into Aurora using your Google account, you should be able to use paid apps.
I mean in the end you are for sure breaking ToS so the chance of your account getting banned is non-zero, but it should be possible. Let me know if you need more information on that.
Wow, using microG and Aurora to restore my Google Play purchases? But it’s against Google’s ToS, you said. However, I think I don’t want to risk my Google account being banned by using microG and Aurora. Maybe I have another approach: one phone with Google and one phone without Google.
If you’re living in the European Union, they can’t, because of the DSA and DMA.
Amateurs. Why did you buy all this proprietary software in the first place? Get rid of it. Setup your own cloud services, all with FOSS tools and you’re fine.
Everyone has been there, including you and me. How is our community supposed to grow if they constantly get chastised for mistakes of the past? If we value freedom in computing, shouldn’t we help others get there as well, instead of being purists about it?
Because it is not that cheap to fully FOSS-ify myself here. 😅 I can’t buy my own servers.
You don’t need servers to have freedom in your computing, just do things locally on your computer. Even phones are surprisingly capable. For a great starting point, I’d recommend F-Droid (AppStore) in GrapheneOS (Android minus the Google viruses), Super easy to set up, and it gets you everything you need. Well, at least for me. There is also a good website called alternativeto.net, If you’re searching for software on a normal computer.
Edit: Plus, if you use Aurora (google play store access programme) with your Google ID, you have access to every paid program on your phone. Also, if you’re an EU citizen, they can’t ban you because they have been ruled a gatekeeper thanks to the DSA and DMA. MicroG, as far as I’ve read about it, since I don’t use it, is only needed for Google Apps, so if you don’t use them, why bother?
