As Opt Out October comes to a close, we want to take a moment to share some more outside resources to consider on your journey to find alternatives to the major tech companies’ products.
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For privacy-focused alternatives to everything from browsers to notes apps, Privacy Guides has an abundance of recommendations. https://www.privacyguides.org/
Tech Reclaimers offers guides, resources, and alternative options to a variety of big tech company software. https://www.techreclaimers.club/
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Tech Reclaimers offers guides, resources, and alternative options to a variety of big tech company software. https://www.techreclaimers.club/
Open Alternative is a huge collection of open-source alternatives to a variety of software. https://openalternative.co/
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Open Alternative is a huge collection of open-source alternatives to a variety of software. https://openalternative.co/
Privacy Tools is another collection of alternative tools for various types of software. https://privacytools.io/
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Privacy Tools is another collection of alternative tools for various types of software. https://privacytools.io/
For starter guides and other DIY ideas, check out The Opt Out Project. https://www.optoutproject.net/
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For starter guides and other DIY ideas, check out The Opt Out Project. https://www.optoutproject.net/
If you’re more interested in self hosting your own tools, Self Host collects together some of the most popular alternatives to big tech tools. https://selfh.st/apps/
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If you’re more interested in self hosting your own tools, Self Host collects together some of the most popular alternatives to big tech tools. https://selfh.st/apps/
We’re sure there are plenty of other resources we’ve missed. Have some favorites you’d like to share with others? Or just want to talk about some of the alternatives that you discovered this month and recommend? Reply here!
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Privacy Tools is another collection of alternative tools for various types of software. https://privacytools.io/
@eff
Proton mail on here
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We’re sure there are plenty of other resources we’ve missed. Have some favorites you’d like to share with others? Or just want to talk about some of the alternatives that you discovered this month and recommend? Reply here!
I think what would be great is to point out successful integrations - eg that document processor that works really well with this versioning software, or the collaborative office suite. The suite of image processing tools that share familiar ux in the user interface.
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We’re sure there are plenty of other resources we’ve missed. Have some favorites you’d like to share with others? Or just want to talk about some of the alternatives that you discovered this month and recommend? Reply here!
@eff
While I respect the EFF's mission and a lot of the work you've been doing, I have to admit I feel disappointed reading your recommendations in this Opt Out campaign.The main approach taken seems to be avoiding certain companies instead of evaluating concrete technologies, services and products based on their merit with regard to ensuring users' privacy and freedom. This mainly is an issue in the sections about operating systems and browsers.
I don't understand how the recommendations for traditional desktop Linux operating systems, Firefox-based browsers and especially DuckDuckGo browser got made, if your goal is protecting users.
Privacy can't be properly enforced or guaranteed without good security. Lackluster security means we can't expect privacy controls to be enforced and work as advertised. User choice and freedom also can't be guaranteed if they don't have proper control over their private data, by gating access behind consent that's properly enforced.
In the context of operating systems and browsers this means that you should strive for solutions that are well secured and that have well designed permission models and controls, preferably working at run time, prompting the user for access when requested, so they can make a decision fit to their needs.
Traditional desktop Linux distros, those based on Fedora, Arch, Debian and the like, lack severely in those areas. They almost always lack system wide mandatory access control and obligatory software sandboxing with an accompanying run time fine grained permission model (Flatpak doesn't fit run time and fine grained and has numerous escape possibilities). Furthermore their tech stacks are largely written in memory unsafe code and they also lack modern exploit mitigations found on Windows and MacOS. The best solutions in the area of desktop operating systems are currently Android desktop mode, GooglebookOS, ChromeOS and MacOS, in that order. They are much more secure and have such permission models, although they aren't fully obligatory on MacOS for non-Mac App Store apps. The benefit of MacOS is that it runs on well secured hardware which is rare for desktops, with proper secure elements and ARM chips.
As per the browsers, the best security is offered by Chromium based browsers. They have the most complete and strongest sandboxing, including far going site isolation. Their state partitioning is also good, as well as their exploit mitigations. Chromium also gets frequent updates fixing vulnerabilities, and some chromium browsers also ship those very timely. They also have a lot of permission controls that work at run time and the chromium based browsers that dropped MV2 support for extensions also have a much better permission model for extensions. Firefox lacks severely on all of this. This sadly also has implications for the Tor Browser, which clearly has value if you only look at anti fingerprinting and TOR. DuckDuckGo browser is a WebView browser which has a lot of fundamental security features disabled like site isolation and is therefore really a bad idea.
Interesting resources are:
* https://rknf404.github.io/chromium-hardening-guide
* https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/linux-insecurities/ -
As Opt Out October comes to a close, we want to take a moment to share some more outside resources to consider on your journey to find alternatives to the major tech companies’ products. After all, Opt Out October can and should be a yearlong process. https://www.eff.org/pages/welcome-opt-out-october-lets-take-control-our-data-and-our-devices
@eff Don't forget Digital Independence day is coming up!
https://di.day/en
#di_day -
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