Yes im aware that my search engine choice is not the best option.
As others have said, remove all proton stuff that you can. You are just replacing one centralized service with another. Google started out good too and look where we are now. Never put too many eggs in one basket.
My answer to this is to use a custom domain with an email aliasing service.
I’ve gone through about half of the 400 accounts in my password manager and moved them over. I’ll migrate the rest over the next week or so.
So, I’m switching from Gmail to Proton for now, but if Proton starts to get worse or Tuta catches up on functionality or there’s a better provider that emerges or I decide to try to self-host, it’s one easy change at the alias provider to redirect all of my mail to a new email provider.
You got great choices, actually. I’d only recommend to be as little dependent on multiple fronts on one company. So I’d change a few of Proton to something else. As long as Proton doesn’t replace their CEO with an explicitly antifascist one, I don’t know if they re a good spot.
Depending on how private communications must be, Threema might be better than Signal.
If you don’t need to synchronise with others and your threat model is not physical attacks/theft, then agendas can be just on paper. Same for the calendar.
As for distro…
Mint is great (and honestly what I’d rec for people brand new to Linux). If you want to harden privacy/security more though, the following Linux distros might be better:
- Fedora (any of them). It’s an international upstream distro from Red Hat (American company, parent company is IBM). In other words, it’s developed by the community, which is gathered in the Fedora Project. Their headquarters is in NC, USA. Red Hat then uses the community distro to make their own distro, and in return, finances Fedora. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, uses it. If he trusts it, I trust it.
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed -, developed by the OpenSUSE community, backed by OpenSUSE from Germany. Pretty good all-arounder.
- Arch Linux, developed internationally, but most devs are spread across Europe. Has an extensive wiki (that also is good for other distros), though it’s not exactly “plug and play” and I’d rec it only if you know what you’re doing.
- Debian is another option if privacy is less of a concern for you, than it being FOSS. It’s one of the most FOSS distros out there, and also highly independent and international.
I assume you want to use your distro as daily driver, and that your threat model isn’t too severe. So the above ones should suffice.
If the threat model calls for it, or you’re willing to sacrifice some usability for slightly more security, you could try QubesOS (arguably one of the most secure distros since it sandboxes everything as if they were a separate computer). Tails is another alternative, that’s on a USB and forgets itself after usage.
For search engines…
… go for Qwant (French) or Ecosia (German). Both are European-owned and are busy constructing their own indexes (currently they still use Bing and Google). There’s Mojeek (UK-based) which is independent.
I don’t know how to block specific sites from popping up on them though, since I notice a certain trillionnaire’s personal ““wiki”” pops up a LOT. Probably he’s cheating and search bumping to spread his desinformation. It should be blocked.
Presearch also exists, which is decentralised and uses its own indexes. If you want OSS, there’s SearXNG and YaCy which have metasearch options. Be careful in which instance you pick, though.
Network effect is the biggest problem for messaging services, and so I would still push for Signal over the alternatives that are technically better. This guide seems like it is focussed on users who are new to the space
I agree with the Linux recommendation, but I’d offer CachyOS over pure Arch for newcomers. The limine bootloader gives a lot of peace of mind, since you can tell the user “if you get a bad update, reboot and pick an older option on the first screen”.
Adding my personal notes on search engines here for anyone’s interest. I personally use Qwant on Desktop and DuckDuckGo on mobile. I like Qwant because they are at least working on their own index and are EU-based. On the other hand, DuckDuckGo is faster and has a more comprehensive privacy policy. I’m really trying to use Mojeek on mobile but the search results are much worse than DuckDuckGo and Qwant in my repeated experience.
Qwant DuckDuckGo Mojeek xPrivo Kagi IP collection Yes No No No temporary Hosting FRA USA UK EU USA Index ~40% own index + ~60% Bing 100% Bing Own Own Own Direct monthly cost 0 0 0 4-7€ 5€ Passing data to third parties Search data and IP go to Microsoft separately No No No No Quality (subjective) +++ +++ + ++ ? AI summary / chat unclear optional no optional ? Speed + ++ +++ ++ ? SecureBlue also looks decent and brings some of the security hardening used in GrapheneOS
Yeah looking at it I had the same thought. Il look into Threema, thanks!
I prefer Comaps over OSMand.
OSMAnd has a lot more features that I personally use
Arent you using too much proton
Ecosystems which are easy to use are great for users and the reason why Google has a monopoly. If proton is a decent privacy centered alternative then more power to them.
Maps is the hardest thing to replace. I like comaps but it’s hard to find any businesses on it. They should probably start scrapping google maps because there no way to get ahead at this point.
I use Mapy (EU)
Murena Workspace and kDrive instead of Gmail/Gdrive
AlterSend (P2P) instead of DropBox
vgy.me (UK) instead of Google Photos
Search - Mojeek, Startpage, MetaGer
AI - Andisearch
Vivaldi Browser, it’s Calendar, Mail and Mail Client, Feed, Notes
Zen Browser
Mandatory Portmaster on Desktop (Windows/Linux) and InViziblePro (Mobile)
Have you tried Magic Earth Navigation. I tend to switch between Magic Earth and CoMaps but tend to use MAgic Earth more
Its not on fdroid?
It’s unfortunately not truly FOSS, it’s still closed source. But literally every map app with traffic data is so, I just use it to avoid Google… Use Aurora store to get it.
I don’t trust proton.
Get a 5$/ month Nextcloud instance on Hertzner or selfhost it. You’ll get 1 tb drive, calendar, notes, office suite, sync with phone, and much much more.
Depends on how much privacy you need and how much tinkering to get things to work that you’re willing to put up with.
In general, using a variety of services will be more private than going with a single entity like Proton.
Bitwarden is self-hostable, which makes it potentially more private than Protonpass… assuming you actually set up the self-hosting.
Signal isn’t a good long-term plan, as it’s entirely hosted in the US. I don’t think there are currently any known compromises to the encryption model, but iirc the company can see all your communications metadata (which means the government could potentially as well). I don’t mind it for talking with friends, but I would recommend against it for extreme privacy needs (e.g. the government starts getting overzealous with who it counts as enemies of the state, and you or your friends become targets).
Incoming Proton hate. This place has taken to that campaign exceptionally well.
Anyone have thoughts on mailbox.org? I have been thinking of switching. Anyone with experience with the service?
Have been using it solely for mail with my own domain for a few years. Absolutely nothing to complain about. Always worked flawlessly.
I use it. Nothing but positive experiences so far.
If you’re already moving to Graphene, just use Vanadium as your browser. It ships with GOS and is an excellent privacy choice.
Also, proton mail kinda sucks. I used it for a while but switched to fastmail because an email account with zero interoperability is kinda a lousy used experience.
Edit: same with proton calendar. I like the concept but in practice having a locked away calendar isn’t a great feel.
What do you mean “zero interoperability”?
Isn’t the point of moving from things like GMAIL is because the interoperability is exactly why all your data is fucked?
Its just where philosophical and practical meet the road for me.
Proton is a cool idea because they say they don’t scan anything, and that brought me in; but not being able to use an email client of my choice made my day to day experience less pleasant. If you’re in desperate need of the encryption on their servers it may be a totally reasonable trade off, but it wasn’t for me and I’ve heard many others say basically the same.
Because my main objective was not having my personal emails feed the corporate giants my personal information, rather than a hard requirement of encryption, it makes a lot more sense to use fastmail or a similar service and keep the day to day usability of not being completely locked into the proton ecosystem.
Same thing for my calendar, more important to be able to share events with people not logged into proton and to use the client I actually like.
Side note: much of the sell of proton mail gets tossed out the window when you send an email to anyone not using proton. If you email someone using gmail or apple or whatever that server side encryption from proton doesn’t mean dick anymore.
Have you heard of Privacy Guides? They have a whole community of people there and provide privacy focused software and service recommendations, with lots of details explaining their reasoning.
I’m not a fan of a lot of their suggestions
Proton Pass. For privacy, either self host or use offline password managers.
Would CoMaps be a better recommendation than OSMand?
For those who are familiar with Ente, how are their apps? I use something different for 2FA and photos, but I need recommendations for people who don’t want to deal with selfhosting and backing up Aegis
I switched from Google Authenticator to Ente Auth recently and am very, very happy. It works great.
I haven’t tried their other apps yet, though. I intend to take a look at their images app.
Ente is pretty nice, Their UI’s are clean and not bloated much. I don’t use their online services though.
Edit: I use Osm since ive been using it for years now, all map’s are pretty much forks, either from Osm or something that uses Open Street Map (from my understanding)
If you don’t use the online services of Ente photos, check out refra (used to be called “gallery” but changed recently).
Clean UI, customizable to a degree, can download AI models to your phone for photo search. Personally it felt faster than Ente and didn’t have buttons to the online service that I kept clicking on by mistake.
OSMAnd is not OSM. OSMAnd and CoMaps are on equal ground as far as using OSM.
IMO OSMAnd has more features which is great if you want them, but I prefer CoMaps for having what I need while feeling simpler. Can’t really go wrong here, they’re both great.
Contacts > the stock apps on GOS without network access.
Keep > Notesnook.
What’s with all the hoopla about Google nuking devices with GrapheneOS lately?
