My First Privacy Post
De-Googling
Background
Privacy is a big issue for me and has been for a long time. I’m generally a private person and I don’t like giving out any more information than I must, in person or online. For as long as I can remember, I’ve used a few different email addresses to try and separate out the spam from the main stuff. My phone number is rarely given out unless I absolutely have to. In terms of social media, I don’t have any since I took a big step (for me) a few years ago and ditched Facebook (not just for privacy reasons). From this initial base, my interest in privacy (both online and in person) has grown a huge amount.
As part of this increasing interest in all thing’s personal privacy, I’ve been interested in trying to see what I could do to reduce the amount of data that I was giving out. I’m all for free and open-source software (more so since starting this journey!), but free software and services where you have to give more information than you realise irks me. Especially considering that a lot of services don’t have much transparency over what it is that you ARE handing over. Over the past few years, the phrase “if you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product” has cropped many times in the various articles, podcasts and videos that I’ve looked at. The lack of control and transparency over user data means that many people don’t realise just what they are giving up.
Pocket privacy
One of my most used devices is my phone. Since they first started becoming a generally available device, I’ve had one. I’ve never owned an iPhone, but I was an early adopter of Android, much to the amusement of some of my friends who claimed that it would never take off or catch up to Apple! So, I’ve had a smart phone for a while and have (blindly) used it without thought towards what privacy invasions have occurred. So much of my digital life was tied up to my phone and I figured that this would be one of the best places to start in this next stage of my privacy journey.
Starting out, I looked into what options there was for Linux phones (I liked that idea a lot!), but the Librem 5 wasn’t out yet and I couldn’t get the Pine64 Phone in Australia. Well, I probably could but it wasn’t confirmed that the signal bands were suitable for use in Australia yet either. So, instead I looked at a custom ROM for the Pixel 3a (my current phone) and saw GrapheneOS pop up on a number of articles. This was touted as one of the most secure Android OS' around and didn’t use the Google layer that is on top of most Android OS' out there.
Going down this path has given me more trust in many of the applications that I use, and I’ve found myself more willing to use and integrate my phone a bit more into my life. At the same time, it’s also been hard to get rid of some things from my phone but relieving also. As an avid gamer, and part of a few different gaming groups, Discord is my chat application of choice and it’s been rather strange distancing myself from it whilst I’m not at my computer. Though, it’s actually been good, as I find myself not reaching for my phone every time that I’m bored or have some time to kill, no matter how brief (standing in lines, etc).
Being taught to flash
As always, I like to try and find some form of tutorial or guide to walk me through whatever I’m researching/learning. I’d played with custom ROM’s before, but I don’t remember it being quite such a smooth process. Maybe I’ve progressed or maybe the technology has… Either way, I found an excellent blog post both in working through the process of installing the ROM, but then what to do from there in terms of setting up GrapheneOS with the initial apps and customisations: https://redandblack.io/blog/2020/how-to-set-up-grapheneos/
For anyone else going through this process, I’d highly recommend giving that article a read through first, then following along. I didn’t end up installing a VPN immediately as, for whatever reason, I thought it was a lot more work than it actually was. Instead, it took me months to add a VPN to my list of mobile phone privacy tools that I used. Other than that, I followed along with the app recommendations that they listed in the article for the most part. Since then, I’ve added a few others, but that list gave me the basis that I still use today.
What I missed
Through this process there were several applications that I used a lot and was definitely concerned with giving up/replacing. The following are some of these and the replacements I’ve been using.
Google Maps
There are a number of navigation applications that can be used instead of Google Maps and, sadly, it was after I had already decided to get rid of it when I realise just how reliant I had become on a piece of software that really was just targeted at tracking, serving ads, and gathering user data. Honestly, looking back, I distinctly remember seeing an increase in ads for places in Google Maps, but I still never equated that with replacing the application. I also remember, not too long after, going through every privacy setting I could find for Google (not just Google Maps) and locking down what I could, but that was never going to be the same as just getting rid of the application all together.
I’ve been using OsmAnd~ for my navigation purposes. It works fine enough but it definitely isn’t as polished or clear as Google Maps when it comes to directions. There is also a problem (for me, at least) that is preventing me from getting voice directions, so I need to have the phone on my dashboard mount when driving. Using Google Maps had also gotten me into the habit of using it for everything, even if I didn’t really need directions. So, removing this has helped me practice navigating without constant directions and pay more attention to the signs and direction I’m heading in.
Gmail
I don’t know why I didn’t think about changing away from the Gmail application a long time ago. It’s just an email provider/client and I really didn’t need to be using the Google supplied one.
After a bit of stuffing around (and, admittedly, noobish mistakes on my part) I have FairEmail up and running and it works flawlessly. I don’t miss the Gmail app in the slightest.
Since starting to write this article, I’ve actually changed things up again, but I’ll go over this in a later post where I can discuss all the email changes I’ve made over the past 6 months.
Discord
As I mentioned above, this is probably the one app that I missed the most but, at the same time, I think that ditching this was a healthier change either way.
I couldn’t find something that could emulate the Discord app or to act as a mirror or something, so I actually ended up reinstalling it on GrapheneOS using the Aurora Store. The benefit of this is that I can use the app still (though I probably should remove it, I don’t think that it’s the most privacy friendly…) but I don’t get any notifications through the notifications bar. This has made a huge difference to my concentration levels, not getting disturbed constantly with messages through there.
YouTube
The YouTube app was pretty good, but I was always suspicious of the recommended videos that were provided to me. All my search history, watch history, etc, was switched off/paused, and there shouldn’t have been any way for Google to track or remember these things, but they were always strangely tailored to me. So, this was one application that I was very keen to get off of my phone and to try an alternative.
I’ve been using NewPipe, and it’s great so far. There’s nothing yet that I’d consider a deal breaker or anything to make me miss the Google YouTube application. It has the mini-player, background playing, downloading of videos, and all of it feels better in terms of tracking and personal data gathering. Of course, I can’t confirm that part, but there’s no videos on there that appear to be recommended for me in particular.
The other benefit is that it works for SoundCloud as well, not great, but enough that I can listen to some music easily through that as well.
NewPipe definitely has some issues though and I’ve frequently found that it crashes out or doesn’t load a full list of videos, either on the home pages or in a search that’s been made. I don’t think that this is the fault of NewPipe though, some of the error messages appear to be related to getting the information from the Google servers. I could be wrong though!
Similar to my readiness to ditch the YouTube application, I was also very keen to get rid of WhatsApp. I hate anything that requires me to use my phone number as its means of identification (10minutephonenumber, when?), though I do understand that that is probably part of the reason that has made it such a popular application.
There have been numerous security and privacy articles voicing concerns about WhatsApp and, although I can’t really verify any of them, I’m much more comfortable erring on the side of caution and not using something like that. I’m not sure how it’s possible for a service like that to operate completely free and on such a large scale without having some way of making money off of its users.
I’ve moved over to Signal which, to be fair, has also had some privacy and security concerns too, but it seems to be a more trusted method of communication and I really don’t have any way to verify what is true and what isn’t to be honest. In April this year, I had a number (2-3) of spam messages for Amazon come through on Signal. This doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident to my phone number, but rather something to do with the Signal servers (Gizmodo article)
What I’ve found so far
Finding a healthier relationship with technology wasn’t the goal of this experiment, but I believe that’s one of the biggest outcomes. My phone now has less applications on it (always a good bet generally for privacy), but my phone is less intrusive in my life now as a result and the less I use my phone, the better. There are a few articles that I’ve read (I haven’t vetted any of them or their claims!) and similar comments or recommendations frequently pop up there and in various privacy subReddits and forum posts that I also look at around privacy.
I’m always worried that my attention span is lessening as my days go on and reducing my use of the number one distraction tool itself has been great. I used to read a lot when I was younger and, even though I’ve definitely got less free time than a younger-me did, I think that this has been at least partly affected by the number of distractions that I have ongoing at any one time. Even when I try to get back into the habit of reading more, I found that the frequency of taking breaks was definitely higher than I’d have liked. Since de-Googling my digital life and reducing the number of functions that my smartphone serves, I’ve definitely noticed a difference in a positive way. Which is good since I started back studying this year. Hell, at this rate, I might even get through that reading list that has grown more than it’s shrunk in recent years!
I suppose that the conclusion to this can be summed up with: I like the changes and the effect that they’ve had on my everyday life, so I won’t be reverting any time soon.
Notes
Episode 3 of Cortex (the Myke Hurley and CGP Grey productivity podcast) had some opinions from CGP Grey about reduction of choices. There’s apparently a number of cognitive studies that prove a reduction of choice can lead to a ‘lightening’ of the brain/stresses. Throughout this and further podcast episodes there are repeated discussions about the use and purpose of a mobile phone, which Grey talks about restricting to a few different functions: health and fitness, communication (phone calls and some messages), etc. He doesn’t use the browser or an email application on his phone either. These decisions were interesting to me as that is similar to the path I’ve been on; reducing the functionality of my phone, but for privacy reasons.