DeGoogle Yourself

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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

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Advice on degoogling (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by eternauta@lemmy.ml to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

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I'm looking into dumping googlified android with the upcoming lockdowns.

I'm a beginner-intermediate with FOSS tech: I use Ubuntu as my main machine at home, and have Lineage on a couple of old phones that I use for things at home. I use Fdroid a lot, and have things like newpipe as well on my basic Chinese handset, along with google services.

I can't really handle bleeding edge things very well, and I'm aware that even stock android isn't perfect. Just looking for options/advice.

I understand some banking apps etc will be difficult to run outside of google, and this is something that will be tough, but I'm prepping for it.

Graphene seems to be the most popular, but at this stage my understanding is it only works on Pixel phones. I'm also aware of fairphone. I know that lineage is supported on some Oneplus phones, but I don't know how safe/secure that might be.

I know that most things aren't really 'secure' in the sense that companies all snoop, but I'm thinking about things like banking or NFC payment, which I sometimes do use.

Any advice would be helpful, even if it's just confirming that the price of escaping google might be giving up a lot of this functionality right now....

Thanks in advance!

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[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Fairphone 6 comes from a small company. They have MicroG installed and that is what interfaces with the play store. It will allow you to do banking. It has a call home but you can just disable cloud messaging and it will stop. It runs on /e/OS and will work with Murena provider if you are in the US. If you are not in US, there are probably a ton of other options like Volla phone.

You can get a Fairphone 6 that comes with E/OS out of the box. It's a mid grade quality phone and a bit expensive for what it is. It's ethically sourced (fair labor agreements with China), modular so that you can easily repair, has kill switch for microphone and camera, faked geolocation setting, app tracker detection and blocking, IP spoofing, VPN, their own store that gives you privacy scores for each app, and links to the rationale for those privacy scores, and a carefully curated ecosystem. I've tested the normal apps against Fossify, and went back to their native ecosystem for everything other than the calling app. The only proprietary app is Magic Earth, which is a European map app that can help with traffic reroutes I think. I think they just needed a way for people to bank and drive to be marketable. You can get rid of MicroG or MagicEarth with adb. I kept MagicEarth. They just don't want people deleting apps and using their support resources when they eff things up, I assume. I deleted the weather app Bliss but wish I didn't. I do not bank on my phone, nor can I without MicroG. I'm sure you can use Insular if you really wanna bank and be super extra careful for whatever reason. I probably should have done that.

Service through Murena is way cheaper too, to the point that it probably offsets the price of the phone at some point. I think I pay $56 for unlimited everything plus hotspot.

E/OS is privacy focused. The peace of mind is worth every penny. They could enshittify later but at least Google would have competition.

It has a Chromite fork for a browser. I use it with bookmarks and use the Searxist app with randomized SearXNG servers for my engine, because their search engine is garbage (bless then for trying). Anyways, let me know if you have any other questions.

Fuck google!