Alternatives to Google

General Chat
21

Sadly, you can never fully protect your email address from a breach. Even using an alias service. Your email address can become ‘owned’ as soon as you enter it anywhere.

If simples and free is what you’re after, sign up for an OnMail account and forward everything to that. OnMail allows email screening (but no ‘+’ feature)

If simples is what you’re after, get a Hey account - email screening, ‘+’ feature, tracking removal/alert. It’s about as secure as it gets without investing setup & maintenance time into your own email server.

I have no problem posting my (Hey) email+ address because no-one gets to my Imbox without permission. But this also means I miss out on my $500K inheritance from uncle fester :man_shrugging:

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22

mailbox.org allows you to create disposable addresses, which is handy when you need to enter your email address (perhaps for verification) but don’t want any further comms.

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23

Is there a good offline map/navigation app for iOS, other than Google Maps? I will be going away for a few days with no access to internet but it would still be important to have turn-by-turn navigation and a general map for hiking. I can’t find an option in Apple Maps and Here We Go used to be a great app for driving but that seems to have disappeared from the AppStore

24

osmand. Turn by turn can depend on how well the area is mapped, its all open mapping data added by people, so technically you can add the extra detail yourself if its missing :smiley: . Many areas are highly detailed, in some cases with far more detail than any commercial mapping software. For general mapping for hiking its pretty good. It also has things like route planning, map makers, mapillary (like streetview). Some things are plugins like contour lines (small cost) useful for hiking. OSMaps might be good for hiking, especially if you have a paper map (recommended) as you’ll get a digital version as well you can add to the app.

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25

Thank you, I’ll give them a go!

26

+1 for the osmaps app. It’s not the sleekest, but easily one of my most used apps.

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27

Just cashed in a free six months on OSMaps from a birthday gift hiking routes book. Looking forward to putting it through its paces this weekend, my first trip away since February last year.

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28

Mail: I got rid of Gmail 18 months ago and switched to Protonmail who I find excellent, certainly worth the cost of the subscription which of course I paid for using my Starling debit card in CHF on a Black Friday deal thus saving a bit of dosh in the process!
Browser: Only ever use Firefox where absolutely possible.

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29

I have a love hate relationship with ProtonMail, at the moment my the domain I use I just use my domain providers email service which is good enough and there’s no scanning of emails for advertising.

Highly recommend people get a domain though, a .co.uk is just under £9 a year and we’ll worth it for the flexibility

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30

I started replacing all of my google products some time back. Switching to open source alternatives, paid (if i have to) providers and self hosting solutions. As they say, if it’s free, you are the product.

Email: ProtonMail (Paid Tier - a few quid a month)
Coupled with Simplelogin (with custom domain) as an aliaser

Cloud: Nextcloud.
It can be self hosted or using a provider, you can usually get a free account. This is what i use, which gives 8gb as a free starter. Tab Digital. Nextcloud comes with Photos, notes, calendar, contacts and tasks off the bat.

Mobile to Cloud sync: Davx
This gives you the link between your phone and cloud. For the calendars, contacts, tasks.

Play Store: F Droid
This can be used to replace all the closed source applications and handy for installing apps without google trackers baked within them.

Browser on Android: Fennec Browser, Mull Browser, Bromite
These three are downloaded from the Fdroid app store. Fennec and Mull are firefox based and hardened.
Bromite is based on Chrome, but with all that extra security in.

Browser on PC: Hardened Firefox
Firefox installed with Ublock Origin and tweaks made to the About:Config to enable further security/privacy. There are plenty of guides on the webs, for your ublock origin setup and about:config

News: Feeder.
Downloaded from Fdroid, its an RSS reader. So find all them feeds you want to include.

Maps: Here We Go
Not sure how much better this is, but hey, its not google!

Other than the above, removed my gmail login to websites and cleaned up my gmail account, giving them minimal data to harvest.

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31

You’ve immediately launched me out of my depth in just six words. I’m not sure what use I’d have for one personally…

32

If your email provider were go down, you can just update your host records to point to another email provider.

Instead of losing access to your whole email presence

33

Your email. I don’t use it for anything else. But having [email protected] is really nice. Another big benefit is portability. If you need to move email provider you don’t lose your email address.

Domains are actually really easy to register and setting up email with them with some providers is as simple as pressing a button (I use gandi.net always been really good)

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34

That’s a fair point, and if I had a business, it may be worth my while. As is, I’m just an ordinary bloke without requirements that perhaps others need or want.

35

I use two email names with Proton, .com and .ch. The .ch does confuse a few people :upside_down_face:

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36

Yeah I have those with them as well, but if ProtonMail ever go bust or have any other issue with you those addresses are gone. Hense the portability of a custom domain. Not for everyone but once you have one you’re never tied to one email provider again.

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37

Doesn’t Apple/Google Contacts already do this?

Here was owned by Nokia im pretty sure, it’s probably #3 after Apple Maps

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38

I’m pretty sure Proton is profitable and a great defender of rights and security, one of the few places I’d be ecstatic to work for

Doubt they’re going anywhere anytime soon, thankfully

39

Yea, the linking to a google/ apple cloud would work with google/apple products.

But if you are using nextcloud, you will need to use davx or WebDAV to create that link between your own apps and it.

40

Oh I didn’t know NextCloud was a contacts centre as well, that’s really neat

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