Noob Question: If you aren't willing to deal with custom OSes like Linux (for computers) and Android Custom Roms (for phones), do you just not have any privacy at all?

WhoRoger, 10 months ago

They don’t record your every keystroke and such (that we know of), but they do log what app/program you open and when, how long you keep it open, if you’re using your keyboard or mouse, if you’re receiving notifications and from what applications.

On the phone, they know if you’re moving and where you are, can determine who are you with and such.

They are also trying to get you to use their web browsers, chat services, email, online documents… Why do you think they’re doing that?

Watching you wank isn’t super effective when it comes to targeting non-nsfw ads at you. They prefer to collect metadata (who, what, when, where) which is trivial, easier to collect en masse and analyse.

If it’s possible - you can limit the amount of data to some degree, but not entirely. Not just the OS is the problem, other people are. If some idiot uploads their entire phone book to every fucking service, you can’t help your phone number being among them and crosschecked to see who you know.

j4k3, 10 months ago

This is no longer as hard as it has been in the digital-deep past. You need to learn now. The time has past for taking control being an early adopters thing. Linux is orders of magnitude larger than Windows in terms of both hardware compatibility and software. All of the issues that still exist are due to shitty companies that are trying to exploit you with proprietary theft of ownership. You should self educate and know about these anyways. They are the foundations of the dystopian technogarchy. Almost anything a generation or two old is going to work fine with Linux and little research needed. You can buy stuff from specialists like System76, Star Labs, and Tuxedo. You can even buy several options with Linux preinstalled from Lenovo and stuff like the HP Dev One.

You can buy routers with OpenWRT preinstalled or even versions with simplified front ends like pcWRT and others.

Installing Graphene on a Pixel is not hard. This is nothing like the old days of custom ROMs on phones. Graphene will introduce you to a Matrix chat embedded in their webpage just in case you have any issues or do not understand something after reading the documentation. There is an enormous supportive community for Graphene on their Matrix channel and someone will help you in a live chat. The entire build process is almost entirely automated. All you do is open a chrome browser and plug in USB following the instructions once. All the updates are automatically installed over the network after that. The bootloader is locked, root is locked, it is just like a typical OEM experience except there is no stalkerware with things like google recording everything from your microphone 24/7, tracking your location, and everyone/everything you interact with.

themadcodger, 10 months ago

Is graphene only for Pixels?

j4k3, 10 months ago

Yes

xe3, 10 months ago

Yes.

Uniquitous, 10 months ago

The amount of privacy you retain is directly proportional to the level of effort you expend.

life_is_coffee, 10 months ago

You may end up just sharing information broadly unless you use something like grapheneos or a Linux computer. Even with those OS choices the applications may also send data to different services or may share a lot on the web browsers. You may just want to try a few different systems to find out where your comfortable you are cutting yourself off from the services.

goodhunter, 10 months ago

I decided to trust apple’s privacy campaign, happily locked into the ecosystem.

s_s, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Windows is such a complete pain in the ass to use anymore I’m not sure Linux is really all that more difficult.

I know people have really been slow-boiled on the windows side the past 15 years or so, and the frustrations you could encounter are unique to each platform, but I really do think we’re at a point that if you can competently admin your own windows system, you can admin a linux system.

And if you can’t be assed to admin either, then you have a few options:

• Hire a nerd to admin your computer
• Only use a work computer (and non-personal stuff)
• resign to using an iPad where Apple is your admin. 😂

roo, 10 months ago

You can track telemetry, and then block those domains.

IGuessICan, 10 months ago

Windows 10 & 11 indeed do log your keystrokes, browsing history, etc. by default, according to the T&C - also the Microsoft swiftkey keyboard for Android does as well. Here is a good guide for making Windows a little more private, although there really is no escaping at least basic telemetry, which is still way too revealing in my opinion:

vpnoverview.com/…/privacy-settings-windows-10/

scoobford, 10 months ago

Unfortunately, no, you don’t. However, you can buy computers with Linux preinstalled. I haven’t looked in a long time, but they were only marginally more expensive when I looked last.

Also, installing Linux isn’t difficult at all, provided that your motherboard isnt weird about booting it (really just luck of the draw, but usually not a problem), and that you’re willing to nuke all your files. Dual boot installations are where things get precarious.

Knightfox, 10 months ago

I’m a big fan of Shutup10 (www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10). It’s an app you can download and run that greatly simplifies the privacy options available in Windows.

dngray, 10 months ago

I certainly think so.

Even Windows or Chrome OS, provides quite a bit of “control” it’s just that a lot of it is “opt out”. Google does, for example record what YouTube videos you look at against a logged in account by default. Windows does have targeted advertising enabled by default.

I think privacy is really more about what you do on such platforms. If you use products (sites) that clearly have bad policies in regard to privacy then no OS is going to provide really all that much improvement.

gobbling871, 10 months ago

You have threat model to answer this question as privacy means different things to people and there are different privacy levels to every threat model. But to answer your question in a concise manner, any closed source operating system developed by commercial vendors is more likely to ship with/ introduce telemetry, user tracking and other kinds of spyware than an open one.

mrmojo, 10 months ago

There are Linux distributions developped and maintained to be used without having to customize anything, and without any prior knowledge of how the OS works. Check out Ubuntu or Fedora for two good examples.

furrowsofar, 10 months ago

You can even buy them preinstalled. I generally buy my laptops preinstalled but build my workstation myself. You do not need to be technical either as long as you have and idea of how you will work through future issues. No different than Windows in that way.

TheInsane42, 10 months ago

Depends where you buy your hardware…

I bought a laptop I could spec the way I want it, which included a choice of OS. I could choose for 32GB of ram and Windows 11 or 64 GB of ram and Ubuntu for the same prize. Ubunto has no clue how to fill all that memory. (I have, kvm is my friend)

To be honest, it’s totally worth it to spend time in messing about with custom OS on a device you can spare. Linux runs nicely on '12 hardware when you have enough memory. Even the '11 Samsung Tab S2 gets Android 13 via Lineage. Those are nice projects to start with, pick an old device and mess about. Worst that can happen is thag you have to throw it away, which you have to do anyway with the original software.

As somebody else already posted, when you don’t control your OS, somebody else will.

Quereller, 10 months ago

You can already do a lot!. Switch of all the invasive features from google. (Remove advertising ID, switch of any web and app history etc.) Install F-Droid and only use the "good" apps. Put the evil apps in a separate work profile (Shelter app). Look at the configurations of the apps and opt-out of tracking.
Configure your webbrowser to delete cookie and co. ....