It's a long road back to privacy

This post will be my personal experience about trying to gain back my privacy after years of being privacy unconscious. And foremost I want to apologize for my English, if it isn't perfect, 'cause English is not my first language.

I was already using Linux for the past year. I tried switching to it three times, and only the third time was successful. Also interested in open source I was for quite a long time, but the privacy topic has never really interested me. I was following this stupid statement: «I don't worry about privacy because I have nothing to hide», which I regret now. But last Christmas, I suddenly realized how much data I was giving away to Big Tech (and not only them). I can't perfectly remember what did lead me to that realization. Was it some YouTube video, privacy policy that I suddenly decided to check out or something else, but I immediately started to action.

For the past 6 months I deleted more than 100 accounts. Sometimes it was as easy as to press the button, sometimes I had to email support, and sometimes I literally had to fight for my right to remove the account. Even today there are still 7 accounts left, that I can not delete either because support is ignoring me, or because the process is too slow, or because the service simply does not give the right to remove user account.
JustDeleteMe actually helped me very much with that process, and I've even contributed to the project a few times, so to the other users who'll follow my way the process would be at least a little easier.

Today is a special day, though, because I finally get rid of my Google and Microsoft accounts. I can finally breathe free. My situation is still not perfect, 'cause I still have some proprietary, privacy invasive accounts left, like Steam, Discord, or my banking apps. I can't just immediately drop them, but at least I've reduced the amount of information I left behind.
What's the moral? Welp, it would be so much easier for today's me if yesterday's me had been concerned about privacy in the first place.

MrPoopbutt ,

How can i know if my banking app is inherently bad?

toastal ,

Not everything proprietary is inherently bad, but you did more than most ever could. It’s those megacorporations & anything “free” you have to worry the most about.

Steam is a weird one since it is proprietary, & you could lose access to your digital game copies but a) most work if you just download them for long-term storage, b) they provide a decent service with deals & synced saves, c) they are privately-held so they don’t need to chase quarterly profits for shareholders, & d) they have done more for Linux gaming than almost anyone else (even if the selfish goal was to break Microsoft’s shackles & later have a hardware device they could sell you that happens to be mutually beneficial for both sides with so many patches).

Deleting everything Microsoft & Google is very difficult. The former I am locked since too much free software thinks it can sleep in the dragon’s den as GitHub. Google, well good luck finding an employer that isn’t using it in my experience & when it comes to using your own email for instance, there’s like a 90% chance the person on the other end is using a Google or Microsoft email account without encryption to get them the whole message anyhow.

Scolding0513 ,

that's awesome man, im so proud of you, good work

Turd_Ferg ,
@Turd_Ferg@sh.itjust.works avatar

I think there alot of lurkers in this sub (myself included) who are in the same position you were in 6 months ago. Thank you for showing us the first steps. This might be the kick I needed to start getting serious about privacy.

utopiah ,

Kudos, it's indeed a long road but a bright one!

Regarding what's left :

  • I still use Steam, and even have a SteamDeck (running only Linux) but if you want to avoid that itch.io is probably a good option, namely no launcher, only what game developers provide
  • Discord, well you could use the Web page, that's what I do and even calls work. If you want to remove it entirely you will obviously lose your contacts so trickier problem
  • banking, same principle, you can do most of it via the Web. Some convenient options won't work, e.g QR code to login or pay, but overall your bank probably have solutions that don't require anything but a Web browser and your physical cards, do ask them and if it's not up to your standards, check for other banks that might have better terms than the big ones

You don't have to immediately drop the few left but IMHO it's not about being a purist or completionist but rather a journey and you already did a lot!

refalo ,

I think one of the most important things people should consider when discussing or deciding to improve your privacy is to first define your threat model. In other words, what is it you want to protect exactly? What are you worried about? Because there are some things that just can't be done realistically, or things one person might take as a requirement that really doesn't matter to the next person, sometimes for surprising reasons.

For example if you're worried about three letter agencies doing something, well, sorry to say but you're probably screwed if you're reading this.

If you want to be able to browse online 100% anonymously, that's also extremely difficult (and some say impossible, cough creepjs) even for the smartest people.

If you're worried about companies and advertisers selling your data, I think there's a lot more you can do to mitigate this than the above things. But some will still argue even going outside at all, having a job, or spending money on things can be a big threat to that too.

Basically decide on what things you actually care about, and start there vs just reading randomdude.com's "subjective guide to privacy 101".

possiblylinux127 , (edited )
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

*because

'Cause does not make sense. Other than that your English is fine

Edit: This might be a regional thing

ResidentCoffeeCat ,

I don't know the term for it (I'm sure someone who does will chime in later), but that still makes sense. It's a way of typing things out how they're pronounced. Some other examples includes: 'at'll (as a shortening of "that'll"), ol' (as a shortening of "old", as in "good ol' boy"), or the most common y'all being a popular southern way of shortening and contracting 'you' and 'all'.

Note that I'm not claiming this is perfect proper English, but just saying that from the perspective of myself being a native speaker, it makes perfect sense to me, and just adds some character to how my mental voice reads their text.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

That's not proper and can cause confusion. You frankly should not write like that. It is bad practice and doesn't even make a lot of sense to do.

bloodfart ,

Imma star writin out mu accent jus ta piss u off.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

That is bad grammar

bloodfart ,

Who care?

refalo ,

why say many word when few word do trick

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I am going to need you to use some more words in order for me to truly grasp what you are trying to say.

ResidentCoffeeCat ,

While I agree that I think that in most formal situations you should not write that way, I personally see no problem with a more casual writing style like that in a post like this. Seeing as it's written as the writer's personal account of their journey to regain privacy, a slightly more casual writing style is fitting. The benefit of a more expressive writing style, in this context, outweighs the potential reduction in clarity, given that most readers will be able to use context clues just fine.

As a side note, y'all shouldn't be so quick to downvote this guy. While I don't agree with his perspective myself, it's still a fair point of view to have, and it ain't like it's being written in bad faith or such. But that's just my two cents, I s'pose.

toastal ,

The fact that you mark your omission with an apostrophe correctly does wonders for ESL learners so the can see both what is being chopped off while also getting insight into how some native speakers’ accents might produce the sounds. Native speakers should use ’em more of’en.

refalo ,

does not make sense

Define sense... are we talking linguist nerd sense or common casual conversation sense? Because one holds true and the other does not.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

I've never heard anyone say cause instead of because. Maybe it is a regional thing as it seems like there are a decent amount of people who see this as normal.

naught ,

Just chiming in to say your english is great! Ty for the writeup

Vinny_93 ,

It's the privacy vs convenience problem. For most people, the convenience is so much more important so when you can just use Google to sign in everywhere, you get rid of your passwords remembering issue (oh my god how many people have blamed me for losing their passwords, I'm an IT guy).

Companies want to maximise profits by 'knowing' (ie tracking) their customers so they can tailor their products or services to actual usage. A noble goal? They just want to be more convenient for us.

In the end I guess having an account anywhere and the companies seeing anonimised or aggregated, no personally identifiable records, should not be an issue. But they don't need to keep track of where I live, what my e-mail adress or phone number is and especially need not now any third party stuff.

It has become a very untrustworthy business just because the companies could do whatever they wanted and now that there is more scrutiny, they just find back alley ways to screw us over.

GolfNovemberUniform ,

I think "knowing" the customer isn't worth the risks and the amount of carbon emissions. Every company will start selling the data at some point. It means that the unnecessary data collection shouldn't be there in the first place. And I highly doubt they use the useful telemetry to improve the product or make it more convenient. They just add more features they see people are talking about on forums and stuff and don't bother optimizing it for older hardware. The products often get just worse over time (especially in the currect AI era). Bug fixes are there though so I don't have much against error logs

Vinny_93 ,

I'm not saying I agree with their policies, I just know about their own way they justify their data hunger

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

Who remembers their passwords? Use a password manager and it's as simple as a Google login. It even fills in the credentials automatically on a hotkey.

Ok you have to create a new password the first time you want to register somewhere. But how lazy can people get? It's also just a button click in a password manager.

illi ,

I honestly don't know how I could function without password manager. It was one or two passwords for everything or constant resetting becauseI forgot what variaion I used where.

Vinny_93 ,

I've suggested password managers to loads of people who'd rather cling to updating their little pocketbooks where it's impossible to distinguish between certain characters and password versions. The stubbornness of tech illiterates is stunning.

refalo ,

I have to think there's a bigger reason why telling them about it doesn't magically fix anything... I mean "if they were smart" they'd already be using it anyway, but because of "not smart", they also won't switch either.

refalo ,

who remembers their passwords

just remember one master password for everything, totally secure bro

what

tuhriel ,

Password (singular) vs passwords (plural).

refalo ,

I wasn't confused about plural vs singular though. I meant it exactly the way I wrote it

1984 ,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

How is remembering one master password worse than using Google single sign on with a password?

BeatTakeshi ,
@BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world avatar

Also their security sucks and they get hacked all the time.

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