Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
Just this weekend, I setup a domain name, setup email, and setup apps and accounts to replace Google with open-source software and servers I control, generally (I use some 3rd party services that I feel I can trust, like Fastmail and Namecheap). I then turned off and deleted all of my data from Google that I could without deleting my Google account (I need to forward this long-standing email to my new email and I don&#x27;t want to lose my Google Music ratings and playlists right now).<p>It wasn&#x27;t hard, just about 5 hours of work and then a few hours to set everything up as I like it. I pay ~$5 per month for email&#x2F;calendar&#x2F;contacts through Fastmail, ~$10 per year for 2 domains (each), and ~$5 for an Android app to sync my CardDAV&#x2F;CalDAV accounts with my Android phone. I have almost completely deleted&#x2F;disabled Google apps on Android, although I&#x27;m not ready to run LineageOS quite yet. I even use an OSM-based maps app, which doesn&#x27;t work as well as Google Maps, but it is sufficient; navigation sucks compared to Google Maps, but that&#x27;s the price you pay for doing this sort of thing.<p>I&#x27;m not super-paranoid about government surveillance and I didn&#x27;t care about Google tailoring ads to me like most folks here, but after all of the data breaches and such, I decided that controlling my own data is worthwhile just to make me feel better. Now, I am able to do most of the stuff I could do before, maybe 70-80% as good as with Google for some things (like maps), but I have peace of mind.