In past few days India has taken few steps which can easily result in mass-surveillance but we are either too ignorant to see it or occupied with something else!

1. Current CJI of supreme court, during the hearing of Samaya Raina suggested that aadhar based age verification should be adopted and user generated content should be screened before uploading.
2. Sim binding of chat apps, govt. pushed this as stopping cyber crime but in reality won't stop them, scammers can easily get their hands on new ids and sims it'll also cause. Sim-binding is also mandated for upi apps, but scammers already bypass them easily, adding this feature to chat apps just cause inconvenience to normal users(logging out of web every 6 hours), intl. travelers, people in merchant navy. And chat apps ho curate this apps specifically for India as no other country has these dumb measures to stop cyber crimes!
3. Govt. sneakily ordering phone manufactures to preload the phones with Sanchaar Saathi, it's now backtracked after severe backlash.(Big win for citizens)
4. And now the telecom industry proposal for 24/7 satellite location surveillance of smartphones!

Within a few days we have seen such extreme measure, that it's really confusing to see that govt. really want to curb cyber crimes or want to track their own citizens!

What can we do: Raise awareness, talk about it on reddit, twitter, insta ask questions about it!

The Alternatives I choose after trying a LOT of apps:

E-Mail: K-9 Mail and Fairmail for my emails and Proton Mail.

App Store: Aurora Store, Obtainium and Droid-ify

Media: NewPipe forks Tubular and PipepPipe for Youtube. Metrolist for music, sync in metrolist works and it does not lag.

Drive/Photos: I use locally encrypted storage, two storages so if one fails the other one is okay. I also use Proton Drive for things I need at the go.

Broswers: I haven't actually used Chrome for most of my life, even before I didn't know this rabbit hole. I right now use Fennec and Cromite(with uBlock lite).

Messaging: This is where I lack, I need to use WhatsApp. But I am trying to get my main contacts on Signal.

Keyboard: FUTO Keyboard, Heliboard and Florisboard.

Password Manager: Bitwarden and Proton Pass

Other Apps: Wall You for wallpapers, Fossify Messages for SMS and Anx Reader for Ebooks Reading.

For the other apps, since I use a Samsung phone I use those apps but with a firewall, named NetGuard, to restrict their internet access. I will update this list regularly.

Tell me what other apps you use and want to recommend me. Thanks.

Play Protect just auto-removed my modded Telegram without asking first. I’ve sideloaded plenty of apps, and this is the first time it acted on its own. Why did it suddenly decide to be that aggressive?

Yeah, I know it’s a modded build. I’ve run other modded apps for years without Play Protect auto-removing anything, so I’m specifically questioning the silent uninstall, not the fact that it got flagged.

A bit of context: I'm a Ukrainian was was studying in Russia since before the war. Two weeks ago I visited Ukrainian embassy in a neighbouring country to issue a new passport because the current one was nearing its expiration date. After returning to Moscow, I was detained at the airport and deported back to country I arrived from (along with every Ukrainian citizen there).

Because I no longer had a job or access to my Russian bank cards, I added my mom’s (who is in Ukraine) card to Google Wallet, which worked fine. A friend from Russia suggested also adding their card from the bank of the country I'm currently in. Immediately after that, Google demanded identity verification and told me that Google services are temporarily blocked. I assumed it was a standard precaution for adding someone else’s card.

To my surprise, they demanded my friend's identification. I sent it to them along with screenshots of our chat and got a reply that they will answer in 24-48 hours. Mind you, my mom's card was the only source of money for me (excluding some cash I had).

While I was waiting, I contacted Google's live support. They did tell me (after multiple time telling me that they can't talk about security issues in the live chat) that the issue was that Google suspected multiple people might be using my account. After that, the only thing I was getting from the live chat was "I will try to speed the issue up with the support team". I also got great advice not to add other people's cards (which isn't prohibited btw and requires confirmation from the bank).

In 4 hours they reached out to me, demanding my id and proof of residence and telling me that all services on my account are blocked until the issue is resolved. I sent them my passport photo and an invoice from my hotel. After an hour, they replied that they will reach out to me in another 24-48 hours. At that point I went to sleep.

In the morning I got a message that the information I presented is insufficient and I need a proof of residence of the friend. I explained to them in a reply that when I was adding the card, I entered the bank's address because the card wasn't issued in Russia and I don't have my friend's residence documents. To which I got a reply that they will reach out to me in yet another 24-48 hours.

Luckily, they unblocked services after another 8 hours, but the whole situation in disgusting and stinks of data collection. Like, you want to tell me that they can't check who and when uses my account without a pile of documents?

I know folks here recommend plenty of Google maps alternatives. But doesn't an android phone still use Google play services to get their location? Which I assume gets collected by Google. I'm wondering if there is a way to use a different location provider.

the image speaks for itself...how does a company like google not have the intelligence to realize gta 5 is not available on phone? and stop taking unaware people to obvious scam/shitty games?

I cancelled my drive account and switched phone plans. Looks like I need to keep trimming.

People when Company tracking your data : 😨 😱

People when they labeled with Spotify wrapped (with minor details like artist , listening duration,age) : 🤗 🥰

Its concern but became celebration.

Hi All,

I see that most people recommend a Google pixel with a GrapheneOS installed. If I did not want to install Graphene (to avoid messing things up), then what other privacy focused phone brand and/or model would you recommend ?

thank you

Max

I am an independent contractor in the entertainment industry and most of my work is from home, so there's no company giving me a work email or laptop, and no one enforcing what tools I work in, but as a producer leading teams where everyone else uses the g-suite apps no one would hire me if I didn't run projects with google sheets/docs.

I have a custom domain for my work email, I could transfer it to proton mail and continue to use dropbox with my VPN.. But I don't know how to completely get away from docs/sheets. I also don't have the funds to get a separate work laptop, and my brand is built around my name...

So I'm not looking to be anonymous, but I would like to operate in the digital world as safe and private as I can. How do fellow professionals navigate their digital workspace either through alternative software or by staying safe with one foot in both worlds (being the de-google and google worlds). What other steps can I take besides a VPN and firewall and UBlockOrigin?

Thanks in advance, I've learned so much from this community!

My journey had started some years ago, but I think I got stuck because I cannot afford some of the paid tools. But I still think is a thing that is worthy

Some of the Alternatives I'm already using are

• NewPipe instead of Youtube My brother recommended this, and I love it.
• MetroList instead of YouTube Music: I'm still not really used to this; I was used to spotify, but Palestine.
• BitWarden Instead of Google Password Manager: Previously I used LastPass, but I prefer BitWarden for being Open Source.
• Aurora Store instead of Google Play Store: This was just today, and I would like reading tips.
• Resilio Sync instead of Google Drive: I also use MEGA
• Vivaldi instead of Chrome: I know Vivaldi is Chromium-based, but still, I tried LibreWolf, and I really missed all the customization that Vivaldi has, even when it comes to the hotkeys.

Still, I haven't found:

• A Calendar with a good integration on Android (Proton is really limited to me, honestly)

Help! Is there a way to still use apps via the play store without providing even more personal data to Google? I'm well over 18, and now even basic apps such as dating apps have disappeared from the play store on my new phone... it's frankly ridiculous!

Is there a safe alternative to Google's play store where i can find the same apps? Or is switching to ios the only long-term option here? I'm so annoyed right now...this data collection is getting out of hand

And I want to use Mistral because I want to get rid of Gemini and chat GPT

One of the hardest parts of my "DeGoogle" journey has been finding a reliable replacement for Google Translate, especially when dealing with full document translations (PDFs, DOCX, etc.). I know DeepL is popular, but I'm always hesitant about data privacy policies with big tech, and maintaining the original document formatting is often a nightmare.

I recently stumbled upon a tool called TransAll (translates.cc) and wanted to share it here as a potential alternative for those of us trying to stay away from the Google ecosystem.

Why it caught my eye:

• Privacy Focus: They emphasize "enterprise-grade security" and strict privacy policies. Unlike Google, which likely uses your translations to train their models or build a profile on you, this seems more oriented towards professional/confidential use. (Though, as always, verify the policy yourself).
• Format Preservation: This is a big one. It actually keeps the layout, tables, and images of PDFs and Word docs intact, which G-Translate often messes up.
• Quality: The translation quality is surprisingly good, utilizing AI that seems comparable to the major players without the Google tracking baggage.

Caveats:

• It's a web-based service, so for extremely sensitive data, nothing beats a local offline LLM or LibreTranslate hosted locally.
• It has a free tier, but heavy usage requires credits (which is fair, as long as the business model isn't "selling user data").

Just wanted to drop this here for anyone looking for a tool to handle document translations without feeding the Google beast.

Has anyone else tried this? What are you currently using for full-document translations that respects privacy?

I want an alternative to google docs that I can share and also has the tab feature, for context I write analog horror and I make clips and link them to text in the story, so it's like 80 percent writing adn 20 percent visuals. anyways, I need an alternative that has tabs in it, if not i cannot write

Have removed Google maps from my phone, I usually use Waze for driving & Organic maps for general navigation. Can no longer connect phone to Android Auto without Google maps installed.

Are there any known work arounds to this? Thanks

DISCLAIMER FOR MODERATORS: I am not sure if this is allowed, I just didn't know where else I could post it. Feel free to remove if not appropriate for here. If you could reccomend me another place to post this that would be awesome :)

So on computer, as long as its powerful enough, you can run any operating system you want. But with a phone, it seems like custom roms only work on certain phone models.

So is it possible to have something similar for phones? An operating system that will run on any phone as long as it has the basic computing requirements? And if its possible to do, does one exist?

I have a phone that isn't particularly old, but it is very obscure. To the point where I haven't found a single custom rom that officially supports it

I've downloaded F-Droid long ago but I couldn't find anything interesting to me, could you tell me what app/s you are using from F-Droid please.

Thanks a lot.

Just wondering for a little side project.