After about 2 and a half years of battling for my privacy, I’m finally at a place where I can step back and be happy. Technically the seed of privacy was planted 5 years ago, but it hadn’t become a goal yet.
I used to use Windows 7 (even 10 and 11, eventually), an iPhone 6, Gmail, Google Hangouts (anyone else remember when it was called that?) and Discord as my main messengers, Snapchat, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, Reddit, ChatGPT, Chrome, Google, Avast and Avast VPN, YouTube, Authy, and so, so much more.
I am so fortunate to be able to be where I’m at now. I use Fedora (Silverblue. I tried secureblue but it was too strict for my taste), a Pixel 8 running GrapheneOS, Proton Mail + addy.io (although I try to use email as little as possible), Signal and SimpleX Chat, a “self-hosted” music library, some cheaper ways to stream movies, Lemmy (duh), HuggingChat (because I don’t have the hardware to run my own model quite yet), Tor Browser and another (I want to avoid arguments about my browser choice), SearXNG, Proton VPN (until I can get Mullvad VPN paid for), FreeTube, Aegis Authenticator, and a plethora of other software.
I got quite lucky with device compatibility. My computer and laptop just so happen to be compatible with every distro I’ve tried, and I’ve sure dragged them through hell to find the one I want. I’m blessed to have been able to snag a decent phone for GrapheneOS, and so glad to have automated the transition from Spotify.
It’s been a good run. I’m glad to finally be satisfied with where I’m at. I started to see the fruit of my labor months ago. Now I can rest easy and do my part to help others become more privacy aware. I’d love to hear your story too, maybe mine isn’t far off!
Bonus story: The straw that broke the camel’s back that caused me to fully switch to Linux was Windows 11’s Efficiency Mode. It’s a cute feature that throttles the performance of programs to save on carbon emissions… and (at the time) you couldn’t disable it. You could disable it per-process, but it would re-enable itself shortly after. ChatGPT was becoming quite popular at the time, but Efficiency Mode slowing down the browser made it nearly unusable. I did look for ways to permanently disable it, but either I wasn’t experienced enough or it didn’t exist yet. Well, no way except to replace Windows altogether!
I like this. I think it may be one of the only post I have ever seen that shows where a privacy minded folk came from and their journey to end up in a place they’re comfortable at. Way too often stories about one’s privacy journey is them being in the pit of despair (understandable) or those crazy stories of how someone who spent years researching privacy and hardening their device ended up picking windows and all their old habits from all those years ago because it was too much for them.
On that note, great job. I’m happy for you and wish you a good time on your regular (perhaps minimal) maintenance.
Thank you!
I’d honestly love to share the whole crazy story of how I got into privacy in the first place, but it would reveal too many personal details about me and other people. It’s not an easy battle, and I’ve certainly made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about how it turned out. It takes a lot of time and effort, so it is unfortunate to see, as you said, many posts of despair.
It is indeed somewhat frustrating not to be “able” to share the whole adventure for the sake of privacy but that’s just another part of the lonely journey that is personal privacy in itself.
I think what most people lack is a roadmap or a goal. From your post, you achieved you goal and that’s great. More often than not, people spend years looking at all the horror stories and all that they can put in place without sitting down and looking for a goal they themselves wish to get to.
I’d love to see a website or app that has a full privacy roadmap. Even if there is one, I doubt it would be very good. You need something that constantly reminds you “Hey, you’ve been fighting for privacy for X months, and you’ve achieved so much! Look at how far you’ve come.” It would also need to be tailored to each person, because some people already use Android, others don’t, so the switch to a custom ROM may be harder for some people. It would have to make sure to have easy incremental steps, defined goals, threat modeling, “good” rewards, etc.
Sadly, I’m far from capable of coding that, even if I tried. Best of luck to that one Lemmyer that sees this and says “Hold my beer”