Have you ever thought of leaving Google and Facebook? I am sure you would have because more people are starting to know the secret behind these tech behemoths. Most of or almost 100% of services are offered for free by Google and Facebook. Wait a minute, how do they make so much of money if their products are mostly free? Google’s net worth is $279.3B, I am sure that is not possible by selling google cloud and some other services that is meant for business use or don’t tell me evceryone reading this article is paying monthly for extra google drive storage. Facebook's net worth is $138.3B. Google and Facebook makes money by selling our data. Most of us would have read about the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook. Facebook and Google not just sell our data but they also have many other cruel practices that ruin the competitive industry. All this dirty practices make them rule our lives via the tech world. Google knows all your searches, emails and etc. and facebook knows all your chats, friends and etc. I am sure we all want some privacy online so the solution is just to leave those services and switch to better ones. The million dollar question is how we are going to do that? We are lucky that we could and here is how.









1. Emails



Most of us use Gmail. Basically Gmail has the most users for now in the email industry. Imagine how much of emails can Google get from this. These emails are used to determine your interests and there you go Google will give you a pop up of an advertisment that is relevant to you. We all have experienced that and most of us are realizing it. We could switch to emails like ProtonMail and Tutanota. This emails are from the EU so they are subject to EU privacy laws which is better than the American ones. Furthermore these emails use state of the art encryption. They are great in protecting your privacy and they are open source. You can learn more in detail about these emails at their official sites below.



https://tutanota.com/



https://protonmail.com/



2. Search Engine



Most of us use Google. Basically Google has the most users in among top search engines. Users perform 3.5B seraches daily on Google. Google’s search results are sometimes politically influenced. The annoying ads in their search which is so related to the search can be a pain in the ass. We could switch to DuckDuckGo. This search engine focuses on privacy. They do not record your ip address or serach history like Google. Searches on DuckDuckGo is done accurately using keywords from your search. DuckDuckGo’s search engine has a nice interface which you can customize, they have an awesome dark theme. Here is their official site.



https://duckduckgo.com/



3. Messaging



Most of us use Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger. Both are proudly owned by Facebook. Obviously facebook uses data from ur chats and contact lists to make some money via targeted advertising. For instance if you chat with ur friend about a trip to Berlin on Whatsapp, your next visit to your browsere might show you and ad related to Berlin. That is sickening, our data is helping someone else make money without our consent. We could switch to Signal. If you search for the most secured messaging app, Signal is first. Signal messages and calls are always end-to-end encrypted and painstakingly engineered to keep your communication safe. Signal can't read your messages or see your calls, and no one else can either. Learn more at their official site.



https://www.signal.org/



4. Vpn



We all use a variety of vpns. Google and Facebook have not entered the vpn game yet but here I will suggest you guys to use TunnelBear or Protonvpn.TunnelBear is the only VPN in the world to publish regular, independent security audits of their apps. TunnelBear also uses AES 256-Bit encryption which is one of the most secured. Till now TunnelBear has received good comments on its privacy standards. With Protonvpn you can keep your browsing history private. As a Swiss VPN provider, they do not log user activity or share data with third parties. Their anonymous VPN service enables Internet without surveillance. Protonvpn is offered by the creators of Protonmail and Protonvpn ios open source. Protonvpn has extremely high security standards. You can learn more about these vpns at their official sites.



https://www.tunnelbear.com/



https://protonvpn.com/



5. Maps



Most of us use Google Maps. Proudly made by Google. Google records our location via Google Maps by acessing our device’s gps. Most of us want our location to be private but with Google Maps sorry its not. This is why some us might have received notifications from the Google Maps app asking about our review about a visit to a recent location. At most times the location is accurate. We could switch to OpenStreetMap. This is a community run service. General public like us are maintaining this service so there is no company tracking your location. It is not a service controlled by a profitable organisation, it is run by people like us. Learn more at this site https://www.openstreetmap.org/about . Here is their official site.



https://www.openstreetmap.org/



6. Social Media



Most of us use Instagram or Facebook. Both are proudly owned by Facebook. Obviously facebook uses data from ur chats, posts and follower lists to make some money via targeted advertising. If you are using social media to learn new things you could switch to Reddit. In Reddit there are tons of subreddits where people share really great info from sports to tech and etc. You could easily control the ad targeting settings in redditr and it works quite well. The adds are not so related to you and not as frequent as Facebook or Instagram. You could also join mastodon but Reddit is better as it has more users. If you use Facebook or Instagram for friendship there is no good solution because not all your friends would leave those platforms. Here is Mastodon's and Reddit’s official site



https://mastodon.social/about



https://www.reddit.com/



7. Cloud



If you are using Google Drive ITS LIKE DONATING YOUR OWN DATA FOR CHARITY. We could switch to SpiderOak. All of your files are encrypted locally on your computer, and then uploaded to SpiderOak's servers, and any changes you make to your files and folders are synced with the local decrypted versions before being secured and uploaded. SpiderOak's "Zero Knowledge" privacy policy notes that because the encryption process takes place locally, they have no way of knowing what you're storing with them. Essentially, your data is completely private because you're the only person who knows what's being encrypted and transmitted. Tresorit also a great option because all encryption takes place locally on your computer just like on SpiderOak. Both these services use AES 256-Bit encryption which is one of the most secured. Here are their official sites.



https://spideroak.com/



https://tresorit.com/



8. Payments



Google Pay is not really adopted so well yet but if you are using it obviously your payment data is monitored by Google. Even MasterCard and Visa can monitor your transactions. Using these services even Governments and Businesses can know about your transaction habits. The answer is simple, switch to cryptocurrencies. I would suggest Monero (Disclaimer: not widely accepted as Bitcoin). Monero is private because Monero uses ring signatures, ring confidential transactions, and stealth addresses to obfuscate the origins, amounts, and destinations of all transactions. Monero provides all the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency, without any of the typical privacy concessions. Monero is untraceble because sending and receiving addresses as well as transacted amounts are obfuscated by default. Transactions on the Monero blockchain cannot be linked to a particular user or real-world identity. In simple words Bitcoin is not as private as Monero. Here is Monero's official site.

https://www.getmonero.org/

9. Browser

Google Chrome is what most of us use. Well Google Chrome knows every single move you make on the internet wether incognito mode or not. We could switch to Brave Browser and earn some BAT to be tipped to content creators. U could check out more abou Brave Browser on Publish0x as there are a lot of articles about it so i won't talk much about Brave Browser. Learn more about Brave Browser at their official site.

https://brave.com/

References

https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/how-much-is-google-worth/

https://www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/how-much-is-facebook-worth/

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-cloud-storage-services-that-protect-your-priva-729639300

https://tutanota.com/

https://protonmail.com/

https://duckduckgo.com/

https://www.signal.org/

https://www.tunnelbear.com/

https://protonvpn.com/

https://www.openstreetmap.org/about

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

https://mastodon.social/about

https://www.reddit.com/

https://spideroak.com/

https://tresorit.com/

https://www.getmonero.org/

https://brave.com/

Hopefully everyone takes these steps to protect their privacy. Privacy is a human right that we all should stand up for.

To contact me here is my Reddit profile totatree

Thanks for reading