What's your opinion about this? Do you think that they'll use the data to train LLMs?

"It was a private donation from Daniel the individual. Mullvad or its parent and sister companies did not endorse and were not involved in it. Since it has attracted attention and questions we still think it appropriate to comment.

Mullvad is a political company."

You can search and read more about it, but I thought I'd make a post since Mullvad is still being recommended in many places.

It's unavoidable at this point, I'm so done with it. Ive regularly used Spotify, Google (search, docs, mail, ect.) And now I cant click ANYWHERE without "Wanna try our new AI model? It cant work for shit but the novelty is there!" On some random ass app that finds music based on sound or an app that helps you take care of your plants. Im so sick and tired of AI assistants everywhere. I hate to sound like an old boomer (im not even old) but just because something is "easier" doesnt mean it's better. Taking away our intellectual and basic processing, making us dependant on something that is right 60% of the time is just dumb, no???? Why shove AI down our throats? A majority of the population doesnt even WANT AI.

I tried making a list of privacy friendly alternatives [ many of them open source ] with a truly clean reputation as far as we know. I think this is particularly important right now as we have seen major issues arising with previously good companies like Mullvad VPN, Proton, etc - and privacy minded people would prefer to use services that align with their values.

Please comment below if some entries are inaccurate. Here's the list:

KeePass Password Manager

Aegis Authenticator

Quad9 DNS

LibreOffice

Signal, Session, SimpleX Chat

Joplin Notes

LibreWolf Browser

Thunderbird Email Client

IVPN

The Tor Browser

CoMaps - a fork of Organic Maps

Mailbox Mail, Tuta Mail [ both recommended by Privacy Guides .org ]

SearXNG [ Open Source self hosted search engine]

Linux distros like Linux Mint

Fossify suite of basic android apps like Phone, Gallery, Contacts

Please comment below if I have missed out on any good options.

Privacy friendly alternatives with some controversies:

Proton Ecosystem

Brave Browser

Mullvad VPN

GrapheneOS

FUTO Software [ FUTO Keyboard, GrayJay app ]

DuckDuckGo [ Microsoft tracker controversy in 2022 that was later fixed ]

LG Electronics says it will suspend smart TV apps that secretly turn hundreds of millions of TVs into residential proxy nodes, after researchers found the proxy SDKs in more than 42% of apps in LG's webOS store and over a quarter of Samsung's Tizen apps, routing unknown third parties' internet traffic through users' home connections.

Residential proxy firms pay developers to bundle these SDKs, then rent the resulting home IP addresses to customers who often use them for large-scale scraping aka stealing your shit (also for AI training).

Proxy nodes are being embedded at scale in hardware people don't treat as computers and can't easily inspect, and LG's cleanup does nothing for Samsung's Tizen store, where the same problem is present.

Isn't it insane that you can only 'disable' most Google apps? Not 'uninstall' them? Why is this. My phone, my property, my decisions on what to install. Why can't I uninstall Chrome and YouTube? I don't use them and they're taking up space. They are not 'breaking' any functionality of other app when I remove them.

I'm old enough to remember United States v. Microsoft Corp. so why is Google allowed to do this? Genuine question. I really don't know the answer.

Hi, I'm new at degoogling and would like to start with two main things. I'm looking for alternatives to Google photos and Google drive.

I need a photo app/website that can automatically backup the photos from my android phone.

For the substitute for drive what I need is a website/app that I can store itens online but also have access to it offline in my computer, similar to how Google drive does it.

Any suggestions? I don't even know where to start

I just downloaded Collabora on my Android to read MS Office documents. Thoughts on it? Little by little, I’m breaking away from the Google ecosystem.

I started de-googling about a month ago, and so far I think I've done pretty well. I'm self-hosting what I can, and removing as much google as I can. Am I doing well? What could I improve?

To be honest sometimes i still use google maps and youtube all the time :(
When i'm at work i use firefox, when i rarely need a chromium browser i use helium. On my smarhpone i use IronFox and on my personal desktop librewolf.
I still use Claude rarely when i need help with something more complex too.

I was considering switching to mailbox after the proton controversies, but i'm a bit lazy to switch all of my accounts again. I don't have a vpn since idk what it is exactly for (i'm pretty dumb in all of this), and having to stay with it on all the time probably isn't cheap...

so i just got a new phone and im going to install lineageOS on the thing, but i don't want google play services since they are not very private and it kinda feels like a waste when its only for one app anyway. So i want to get my family to switch from google photos to something like ente photos (im not in the position to selfhost, i just want something that doesn't sell our data) but they're probably not gonna budge, since they have used it for a couple of years and ALL of our photo backups are on there so they don't want to risk losing everything.

any tips?

I'm on the same wifi, added my phone number, and changed password. I just formatted my device. Please help, i want to delete my account

Just a first step but trying to get there!

Serious question, of which I don't know an answer. In what way Signal is better than say, Telegram?

While I'm drifting away from Telegram myself, I really wouldn't want to try to convince people to use an equivalent alternative that can potentially go bad in the future.

And why not other messaging apps?

My first smartphone was a Sony Xperia and I really like the recent models they have been bringing out. But I am curious how well these phones do on degoogling, maybe even going full custom rom.
I’m in the market for a new (or refurbished) phone and have been thinking about making it fully de-googled. I know GPixels are great with GrapheneOS and heard that Motorola is going to make a phone that by default comes with GrapheneOS.
But anyone have experience with degoogling a Sony phone?

So i made switch XMAS 2025 from Gmail, degoogled mostly now everything.

Yesterday came my Google Pixel, installed GrapheneOS ( so ironic xD).

But still i got a google Account for youtube, for having Subscriptions, so i have all new videos there.

Is there an alternative for doing this?

And can someone link the chart for degoogled alternatives for apps?

Hey guys,

on degoogle journey and I am looking for a note app. Is anyone using Mimiri notes? How is it to use it? Github looking nice.
I was selfhosting Joplin in the past but I always disliked the app. Little to heavy for my usage.

Which note app are you using in your degoogled setups?