Privacy ? - Make It Tea

Try to learn something about everything, and everything about somethingThomas Huxley “Darwin's bulldog” (1824-1895)
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====== Privacy ? ======

#### Private versus Public

##### De-Googling etc

I recently got totally fed-up with the state of *the internet*. Mobile phones so tightly tied to *Google* or *Apple* that they track your every move and communicate every action you make online with databrokers that use this to profile you and target ads (and worse?) at you.

Why isn't it possible just to use a phone to make phone calls, send text messages, and to innocently and privately look at websites?

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I started *de-googling*[^1] as far as I could. And this included my *desktop* interaction with the web too. I'd already been using adblockers for years, but this time I went further.

And I found it's *impossible to fully de-google*. 

Of course I *knew* this - after all, Android *is* Google. And the web *is* Google.

But I made tiny first steps. Why do I need accounts with Google and other major enshitifiers to do the things I still enjoy online? This feeling also tied in with a desire to cut-back on online shopping (I'll do a post on my *no-buy* aspirations another time) so I got rid of other accounts too.

I got rid of my accounts with (at least these, probably others that I've forgotten about):

  * Google
    * My You Tube Channel was deleted too
  * Microsoft
  * Amazon
  * Paypal
  * eBay
  * Reddit

I didn't have *Facebook* or *Twitter/X* or *Mastodon* or *Instagram* or *Tik-Tok* or any other *social media* accounts, so there was no FOFOMO[^2] to worry about.


#### A quiet online life?

This still means I can use the internet but reduces the level of *integration* which happens - where everything talks to everything else *via Google*.

#### To properly de-Google?

After doing as much as I could with my stock Android phone I ran into the usual problem of how tightly integrated even the simplest of apps is with the Google eco-system and that it didn't seem possible to use a *normal* Android phone and at the same time to be invisible to Google & to escape its spying.

A fully de-googled-at-source-android was the answer. There are a few options. I won't go into them in detail, I just took the easiest route.

I bought a Fairphone6 pre-installed with /e/OS.

I tried it first *without* running *micro-G* (which spoofs some of the functionality of *Google Play Services* etc. and which gives access to certain Google services anonymously so that the apps that rely on some Google functionality can still be installed and will run). 

But that limited my options for apps.

So I enabled *micro-G* and installed a *very small number* of non-FOSS Android apps:

  * 2 **Banking** apps for my personal and business bank accounts
  * **BBC Sounds** - but only because ***I can't abide adverts*** even in podcasts - and the BBC is the only source I can trust not to shove commercial adverts at me during podcasts
  * **Canon Print** - to access my little Canon Selphy printer (yes, it is possible without the Canon Print app, but it's fiddly and error-prone)

And that's all. 

Everything else is either the pre-installed version from /e/OS or it's a FOSS version from *f-Droid*

/e/OS has a built in system-level tracking blocker which circumvents the many (many) *phone-home* tracking messages that these non-FOSS apps send to various analytic/tracking providers. It's quite scary to see just how chatty these apps are, and how many external 3++rd++ party tracking services are fed data - quite separately from the actual application's useful and necessary network traffic (this still flows and allows the app to function normally).

#### Privacy - hiding from real people on the internet 

I took things a step further - and tried to extract myself from *any online activity* which would involve showing anything of mine to *strangers on the internet*. 

I made my [Commonplace Wiki](https://g4slv.info/dokuwiki/) private - nothing was readable by passing strangers.

I'd deleted my You Tube stuff already, as a part of *de-googling* so that had already been taken care of.

I started to delete various accounts that I had on web-forums, and thus my old posts disappeared too (I don't contribute much, and my words are unlikely to be missed by anyone). 

I wanted to *disappear* from the online world. 

I know it's not possible to remove all traces of your past online life - but I wanted my future involvement with the web to be invisible.

#### The Hypocrisy of this

But I was still reading *other* people's websites and blogs. Watching other people's You Tube videos - but *not-logged-in* and via a browser with an *adblocker* (or more often via `NewPipe` or by downloading the video to my laptop 1++st++ by using `yt-dlp`)

I was *consuming* but not *contributing*

This seems selfish and petty.

So I un-hid my dokuwiki site, and it's now readable by anyone. I don't know if anyone finds any of it useful, it exists mainly for me to have a place to store *useful-to-me* information.

I figure though that it's *good* to share stuff online (even when there are probably very few people that'll ever read it). But, because *I* find other peoples' stuff useful, interesting etc. then should I not let other people make up their own minds about my stuff? By at least making it accessible.

The important thing to me now is that this sharing ***must be done without involving the enshitifying platforms*** like *Google*, *Meta* etc. etc.

I *can* share my thoughts, experiments, notes etc. with real people on the internet - but only by hosting it myself.

This can be done with a blog (like this one) or a wiki like [this one](https://g4slv.info/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start) and even with an old hand-built plain html website from more than 20 years ago, like [this one](https://g4slv.info/website/index.html) which I used to have back in the early 2000's and which has been languishing in a zip file for many years. 

#### Blogging in 2026

After deciding that I don't want to hide from *real* people, that the internet is (still) a good thing when used for good reasons. It allows us to share with other *real* people. Enshitification has largely spoiled the *mainstream* web, but there are still lots of personal web sites, blogs, wikis etc. 

Let's keep them going.

This is why I'm blogging now. It's been a few years since I last did any blogging, but I think I can enjoy it again (regardless of the number of readers) and create a small corner of the internet out of my own head. It might be self-indulgent twaddle, it might be pointless and meaningless and if *I* get some happiness out of making it, that's enough. But it *has* to be online and *has* to feel like it's a small fight against the enshitification that the major platforms have wrought on the once wonderful web.




[^1]: I use this as a generic term for *cutting out as much surveillance and tracking as possible*
[^2]: Is this a new coining? **Fear of FOMO**  The fear that I'll suffer *"Fear of Missing Out"*

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