I’ve got to make a decision and want to take a room temperature check on what sacrifices people find acceptable for their own comfort. Use any services you know you shouldn’t? Any tools that you’re just waiting for a chance to replace but can’t yet?
I’ve got to make a decision and want to take a room temperature check on what sacrifices people find acceptable for their own comfort. Use any services you know you shouldn’t? Any tools that you’re just waiting for a chance to replace but can’t yet?
Heres a little list of things that matter to me personally. I’m sure others would have similar takes.
Medical Practitioners:
Privacy I’d part with: Everything, begrudgingly
Reason: it’s better than dying
Job Sites:
Privacy I’d part with: gov docs, job history, financial history, identity
Reason: Having a stable income is worth giving up a little more privacy than usual. I would never give them computer usage info or biometrics, but having income to eat, have shelter, and help others is important.
Youtube:
Privacy I’d part with: usage data, contact info.
Reason: I do use frontends like invidious and grayjay to get around using the site itself, but I fear one day there won’t be any working alternatives seeing how Google is cracking down so hard. Peertube is great too, but most of my favorite content creators don’t use it. It’s also one of my main sources of entertainment and also knowledge like cooking tutorials, building, woodworking etc.
Google Maps:
Privacy I’d part with: usage data, contact info, maybe even location if I’m traveling.
Reason: I use Organic Maps for navigation, but google maps has far superior information on local business, reviews, pictures, etc. Nothing else like it and probably never will be realistically. I use it via sandboxed browser, and to find cool places to travel to and eat.
Discord:
Privacy I’d part with: contact info (and that’s it). They can pry my ID from my cold dead hands.
Reason: My friends litteraly refuse to use anything else 🤷♀️
Windows 10/Easy AntiCheat:
Privacy I’d part with: kernel level access for non-important device
Reason: Certain games are allergic to linux so I still keep windows around and begrudgingly allow kernel level anticheat. These specific games make me happy and are good for my mental health, which offers more than having one out of my many devices secured. I can just use other locked down devices if I need to do more important stuff. I would also never install Windows 11, that’s a hard line for me.
Aside from these, I’ve essentially FOSSified all of my other apps/devices successfully.
TLDR: I would sacrifice elements of my privacy for:
Happiness/Mental Health
Friends/Family
Medical /not dying
A job
Knowledge/Entertainment
Yeah you have pretty much all the same hard lines I have, minus some unusual shit I revoked about my employment history. How do you personally feel about phone keyboards? Is being able to type coherently worth using a product that is collecting keystroke data? Like assume that you are unable to speak respectably at all without it
I kinda have a niche/weird view on keyboards; I use the default aosp keyboard firewalled for no internet access and with spell check turned off. I find it annoying when it changes what I say, and if Idk how to spell something I look it up and try to remember it for next time. I have typos here and there but mostly I don’t mind and I feel it makes me more deliberate in my use of language.
There are also plenty of open source and generally privacy-respecting keyboards on FDroid like Urik keyboard, so no compromise is needed imo
Fair enough. I’ve been on the goosechase through different privacy focused boards for a couple years. All of them have issues with substituting words in ways that don’t make sense because they’re not hooked up to the privacy-nightmare that is datasets that most common products use for predictive text.
Your take still helps me gauge what privacy minded folk consider is or isn’t acceptable risk though so thank you for sharing