Rethinking My Cloud Services
(disclaimer: I have been previously employed or currently employed by several companies mentioned here including Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple. This article reflects my personal views for my personal setup and do not reflect any company or organization.)
We are approaching disaster, the disaster hellscape that cyberpunk novels warned us about. We are all dangling on the precipice of corporate hegemony, technology has allowed an unparalleled level of tracking. We cannot allow this fate to happen, as I grow concerned about this future I rethink my personal setup. What decisions am I making as a consumer? How am I protecting myself? What is ethical and practical? What practical steps can I make?
This post is a walk through of my setup. I’m publishing it here in case others find it useful. This is an ongoing thing for me, there’s no perfect solution right now but we are making things better slowly but surely.
I do not want any single company to control my digital destiny, I’ve identified several large companies here, but this list isn’t all inclusive. I want to avoid any single company controlling too large of a pie of my services. Why? That is too much control any single company to have. It will create the ultimate lock in.
The Big Four: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook
Other large companies: Apple, Samsung, Yandex, Baidu
Must Haves:
- Strong Privacy policy
- No Ecosystem lock in (no more than 2–3 services under a single company)
Nice to haves:
- Open Source Software (OSS)
- Independent, focused companies whenever possible
- Online first with iOS and Android Apps
- Free or freemium
- Backed by Non for Profit
The Browser
The first thing I had to consider with this is my browser. I’ve worked on multiple browsers in my career and it’s the area I know best. I also know it’s the most dangerous in terms of tracking. I need my browser to have strong tracking protection out of the box and to allow me to turn off all telemetry. Furthermore, I need my browser to be independently owned. It cannot be owned by a search or ad company, while they create excellent software it isn’t conducive to my personal privacy setup. It would also be nice to have the browser of choice to be open source and backed by a non profit.
For these reasons, I use Firefox.
Config:
First thing I do with my Firefox install is configure it’s enhanced tracking protection to the most strict possible. I put it on custom and block everything as seen below.
Secondly, then go to my permissions and for location, notifications, autoplay and virtual reality I set it it to “Block new requests asking to access”. As you can see, I also block A11Y services from accessing my browser. This sucks, but it’s being used as a fingerprinting vector. I’m hoping in the future we get better protections here. I know many browser vendors and folks in W3C are working to improve this vector.
You will also see I disable all telemetry. While I completely trust Mozilla with my data and I know they handle it extremely safely this is just me being paranoid.
I then change my search engine to DuckDuckGo, a great search engine that protects users privacy. You will also notice I disable all search suggestions as I don’t want that telemetry being sent anywhere.
One thing I found very useful was to take advantage of Firefox’s One-Click search engines. I give each a keyword (g, w, d) so I can use them in case DDG doesn’t have what I need.
Containers:
This is the main reason I choose Firefox as Multi-account containers are amazing. I’d marry them if I could. I wish they were better configured out of the box. As you can see, I keep my containers organized in both broad bins and strict bins. Some services are just too good to pass up or ignore, like Youtube or Twitter, so I isolate them from all others.
The Facebook container is a must. I also use the Google and Twitter Containers as well. This isolates everything from everything else. I create new containers and categories for containers for sites I frequent, for example, news.
Now containers aren’t perfect. I wish they had a stronger user interface and let me define sites ahead of time. I wish they let folks export their settings and container lists, I wish it caught subdomains easier. But it’s in the right direction.
You can find more here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
Extensions I use:
I use the following extensions to maximize my privacy in Firefox:
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
- Multi-Account Containers
- Facebook Container
- Google Container
- Twitter Container
- HTTPS Everywhere
- uBlock origin
- Decentraleyes
I’m also really fond of this theme I made here:
Honorable Mentions:
- Tor
(Very powerful but very power-user centered and is forked from Firefox and I prefer to work on latest release.) - Safari (on apple)
Very good browser but only works on iOS and macOS devices. While their ITP solution is industry leading they aren’t a non-profit and I also use Linux a lot (Fedora mostly).
All of these have good out of box solutions but I do not want to use a Chromium based browser:
- Microsoft Edge
The new Edge from Microsoft is based off Chromium, it has a lot of excellent privacy-centered features built in. I helped drive some of them while I worked at Microsoft. They’re a great alternative if you want to stay in the Chromium space. Good people. - Vivaldi
- Opera
- Brave
Alternative Services
This has been the hardest part of this exercise. I want to isolate what any single company (or connected network of companies) can know about me. Thus, I need to limit which services I use and find alternatives whenever possible. This has proven to be incredibly difficult as it’s quite difficult to find suitable replacements.
Search
I historically used Google Search. Ever since I moved away from Alta Vista in the late 90s. But I recognize they do extensive tracking on me and their move towards things like amp or making ads even more targeted than before makes me want to switch away.
I decided upon DuckDuckGo as my alternative. It is an independent company and they have a strong privacy focus. Their search does not retain any information on you and their privacy policy is quite strong. I still occasionally use google for when DDG doesn’t give me a great answer but it’s getting better.
Maps
I used Google Maps prior.
Luckily there’s a lot of alternatives here. I choose Open Street Map as it’s free, open source and backed by a non-profit similar to wikimedia. Furthermore, it has an active community behind it. Other good alternatives are Apple Maps and Bing Maps.
I used Gmail prior, as you can see I was really tied to the Google Ecosystem. It’s insidious how I got sucked into it over the years.
This one proved tricky. Gmail is popular because it’s a very good email service with excellent apps and ecosystem built around it. Also, you get so much for free. I decided upon ProtonMail. It’s fully encrypted, they don’t use my data for ads or anything else. It’s free for a starter but if I want extra storage or options (such as calendar or VPN options) I need to pay, which I think is fair. They aren’t monetizing me by selling ads. ProtonMail has a great mobile App and web interface which made me go for it.
I considered alternatives like iCloud, Outlook, Yahoo, etc but Proton seemed the best bet for my needs. They have a strong ethical base and they fit my desire to isolate my services from each other.
Calendar
I used Google Calendar before.
Again, I was VERY tied to google calendar and I tend to live off my calendar. My replacement Calendar has to be free, allow for collaboration and have to have a great web and mobile app. This limited my options a great deal. Proton has a calendar in beta but it doesn’t quite fit all these criteria. I ended up going with iCloud calendar often. They have a strong privacy policy, good mobile, desktop and web apps. It’s not a perfect fit though. This is something I will likely revisit. Right now I use a mix.
I also considered NextCloud, Fruux, and Mozilla Lightning Calendar but none of them fit my needs either. Namely, ease of use and mobile apps.
Cloud Drive
I used Google Drive before.
This one proved the hardest for me. I live off the Cloud. As a former browser engineer, I tend to do all my work in the browser. So I needed something that let me keep all my files portable across all devices with ease. I also needed a strong privacy policy, I do not want them ever looking at the contents of my files.
There’s alternatives like NextCloud, and Spideroak but they were too power-user focused and didn’t fit my needs. I need to be able to log in anywhere and get my stuff, I need solid mobile apps and I need easy to use setup that I can trust. So I considered Dropbox, oneDrive, iCloud, and Amazon Cloud Drive as replacements. It quickly came down to Dropbox and iCloud. Both had the features I wanted and Dropbox’s paper really appealed to me, but their privacy policy did not. They collected telemetry and they accessed my data.
iCloud didn’t do these things so I went with them. This causes some concerns for me as I’m replacing a lot of my services with Apple services in this move and that violates my wanting to spread things out. So far I’m using iCloud for storage and calendar but as we’ll see I’ll also use them for docs and I’ll be using another Apple Product (HomePod) as well. But so far, iCloud is the best option for my needs of usability, privacy, and cost. Sync.com seems quite interesting and it is something I plan to investigate further.
Docs / Office
I used to mostly use Google Docs and Google Sheets.
I keep extensive personal notes, I used Evernote, markdown files written in vim on my personal server, and various other text editors. I used to also just email myself my own notes. But these solutions were all too primitive for my needs and Google Docs and Sheets proved far too useful.
I made the move to use LibreOffice and it’s a great solution but it lacks solid cloud + mobile app options, I’ve been using Apple Pages and Sheets via iCloud to fill these gaps. Not a perfect solution though. They have solid iOS apps and good mobile apps. Dropbox paper was an interesting alternative as well but their privacy policy proved lacking for my needs.
LibreOffice is open source and backed by a non-profit and a great community. They also apparently have an online version which I need to evaluate.
Smart Home
I used to use Amazon Echo.
I keep shomer shabbat and having a smart home has really made my life easier. On friday nights all my lights are automated, so is my electronics, my hot plate, etc. It’s great. I do not, however, like Amazon for ethical reasons and I also have serious concerns about my personal privacy.
The first option I considered was MyCroft. This is an amazing solution but it wasn’t out of box and required too much setup. It’s a distinct option for the power users. I then gave Google Home a look, again this was out for the same reason as Amazon. I gave Apple’s HomePod a look. It wasn’t an ideal fit for my needs but it did fit most of my needs. Again, they have a strong privacy policy.
Content Consumption
I used Youtube, Amazon Prime, Audible, Spotify, and Twitch a lot in this category.
I like to keep media playing in the background while I work. Thus, as the typical millennial that I am I watch far too much YouTube and Twitch. I’m concerned about the amount of Amazon content I consume so I got rid of my Amazon Prime account and I paused my Audible subscription until I found find a good alternative. I’m exploring LibriVox as an alternative to audible.
Spotify is an independent company and have good ethics so I am keeping them.
I found I kept going back to YouTube and Twitch. There’s a lot of small, independent creators I couldn’t find on alternative platforms. So I came up with this mitigation:
- For YouTube, I created an independent Google Account just for YouTube subscriptions. I also kept this account isolated in it’s own container in Firefox.
- For Twitch, I did much of the same but I was able to delete my amazon account while keeping my independent Twitch account.
GitHub
I never used Github all that much but I really do enjoy the service.
I wanted to find alternatives to it for the sake of OSS and open communities.
Codeberg and Gitlab are good alternatives, I use GitLab often enough.
Shopping
I used to use Amazon a lot.
I didn’t like how much I used Amazon. Prime is so dangerous as its such a great enticing combination of services and great deals. Problem is there’s no decent all-inclusive alternatives that I can verify are ethical. I’ve been using etsy, ebay, overstock, newegg, etc lately. The best alternative I can find for amazon is finding many small shops. This needs a better solution.
Conclusion
This hasn’t been easy. A lot of web pages simply don’t play nice with Firefox when I disable all tracking. Furthermore, finding alternative services has been difficult. I use LibreOffice for most things but when I need to work in the cloud I find myself gravitating towards iCloud more and more due to its strong privacy policy. I’m concerned I am going more towards the Apple side of the ecosystem as I have a mac (my work machine) and an iPhone (I do not trust Google personally). I’ve migrated a lot of my services away from Google and fragmented things more.
We need better, more viable, alternatives to Google and Amazon. Finding a replacement shopping service for amazon has proven incredibly difficult. I need to figure out better ethical guidelines for commerce because right now it’s very much “i know it when I see it”.
This is my personal setup and it’s ongoing. I’d love input and ideas on what improvements I can make.