I’m starting a support group for people ditching Facebook and Google

TL;DR: I’ve stopped using Facebook and Google products. If you need help with doing the same or want to share your experiences email me at viktor at nosurveillance.com.

Roughly a month ago I’ve made a pledge. In my last post I’ve asked readers to stop supporting businesses that violate our right to privacy. I needed to make some changes in my life to honor my own recommendations. The goal of this post is to document that process. I’d like to invite you to follow these steps; when it gets too hard I’m happy to discuss the issues and help you out, so you can do the same for someone else.

When researching and writing my article Fighting the surveillance economy I’ve realized my digital life and the information on what I do online is entangled in the web of the biggest corporations. Their key purpose is to collect data derived from my actions to sell the opportunity of modifying my behavior to others. I find this unacceptable and the only thing we can do is to leave the services these companies provide and never look back. You can read about the reasons and recommendations for fighting this phenomena in the original post.

After publishing it, one thing was clear for me: if I can’t abide by my own recommendations and lead by example it would be foolish to expect others to follow me. Giving out advice on improving your privacy as a member of the IVPN team would feel fake.

Here is the list of critical things I needed to change in the past month:
- I had a Facebook account under a fake name that I used to talk to friends via Messenger and track events in my city
- I had Google Maps installed on my phone and I used it occasionally
- I had Waze (owned by Google) on my phone and I used it regularly for driving directions
- I had multiple Gmail accounts that I used a dozen+ times per day

Let’s start with the easy ones.

1. Facebook — I can tell you pressing the Continue button felt good here:

While this person resembles Viktor, closer inspection would prove it’s not him

I’ve started with downloading all my data, just in case. I recommend taking a look at what Facebook knows about you at this point — it’s evident from the log files that a “fake account” won’t save anyone from being profiled.

I’ve let all my friends preferring Messenger know they can reach me through Signal, Telegram, Viber or Whatsapp (yes, owned by Facebook, not good enough) or text from now on. Some indicated Facebook will be better off without me. Some asked questions about the whys and that sparked a discussion on privacy.

I still start typing fac… in the browser bar roughly twice a day out of habit. Naturally, they offer me a way out:

Yeah, thanks, but I’ll stick to my decision. There is no turning back for me.

Here is the Delete Account link. You are ready to jump off the bridge now and trust the parachute.

2. Google Maps — Deleted from my iPhone. My muscle memories still try to pull me in on desktop when I need to locate a place, and I start typing maps.goo…ooh no. I use Apple Maps instead, in app on iPhone and through DuckDuckGo on desktop. Not as good as Google’s, but does the job. Annoying moments happen when I’m searching for obscure points of interests, like a small restaurant or a hardware store and there are no results.

3. Waze — Deleted from my iPhone. This was a weird one. I bought my first car about a year ago and never drove without the help of Waze. The most missed feature will be the display of current speed in the app vs. the speed limit. Now I have to go old school and look at physical signs and the speedometer. Other than this, Apple Maps does the basic job of navigating me from point A to B. I’ll be alright.

4. Gmail — Getting off Gmail felt like an insurmountable task before I started this process. I’ve put this part off until the very last minute. I should have done it a year ago. It’s done now. Phew. I had 5 Gmail addresses for different purposes, now they’re all forwarded and streamlined to viktor at nosurveillance dot com. Nick (IVPN CEO) had some good basic tips for me on this point and I started off following his recommendations. This is what you need to do:

• Choose a provider that accepts using your own domain, has a paid service and a decent privacy policy. I’ve gone with Fastmail; while there are question marks over recent Australian privacy laws, I can easily switch to another service now if need be (see next point).
• Use an existing domain you own or pick a new one for your emails. This way if you ever need to switch again you don’t need to change your contact address everywhere. This was obvious back in the day, but I did not even think of it now. It’s evident all personal email addresses end with gmail.com, right?
  Of all the time I’ve spent on this whole process, including writing this report, I’ve spent the most on coming up with a domain name. I’m picky about names — brands, domains, aliases, usernames, nicknames, babies? — I can reach manic states chasing the best choice. Now you know me a little bit better. Hope you’ll still read on.
• Import all your emails from Gmail through IMAP. Fastmail has great guides for this. You need to enable IMAP in Gmail, allow external access and also enable Unsecure Apps access if necessary. Don’t forget to change the number of message limits through IMAP to None, so all messages get transferred. After all this you can start the migration process and all your Gmail messages will appear in your Fastmail account, under a ‘migrated’ folder. I’ve had some issues with Gmail not granting access due to suspicious activity — you have to wait for their security warning emails, confirm it was you and start the migration again.

a success story in two parts

this is part two

• Set up email forwarding in Gmail so all your incoming emails are going to your new address. Indicate to Gmail you want them to delete their copy. I’ve created dedicated folders for my Gmail incoming forwards under my general Inbox in Fastmail.
• Start letting everyone know that they should use newprivateemail@ownprivatedomain.com instead of your old Gmail address. Yes, this means changing your contact details everywhere, in your Airbnb account, at your bank, newsletter signups…see you in 5 years.
• When you have no more incoming emails to your old Gmail account, delete it.
• Repeat for all Gmail accounts.

I feel that I accomplished my task of ditching the biggest data surveillance companies. I have the firm belief that most of the providers I’m trusting my data with won’t mine it or sell it for their own benefit. I’ll be more proactive with vetting new services going forward.

Some thoughts on limitations and challenges going forward:

1. Gmail will still be able to see my emails coming to those addresses. Even though they are forwarded and deleted I have no illusions about Google’s no-logs policies. I need to be proactive in letting everyone know about this change, so I can delete my accounts asap.

2. Moving off from Messenger and switching to Whatsapp and Viber is a half-solution. Yes, Mr. Zuckerberg promised us end-to-end encryption; let’s wait and see how that unfolds. Until we get there I should get off Whatsapp (owned by Facebook). Also, Viber seem to have an advertising-based business model that is built on behavioral profiling, so I need to ditch them as well. The reason I haven’t done this yet? I’ll have to convince my Mum to install Telegram or Signal on her phone; an uphill battle.

3. I still rely on Google products for my work. Thankfully IVPN is a privacy-first company, so these deviations from the ideal are exclusively caused by my own decisions and lack of acceptable alternatives. I use Google Alerts for monitoring our brand mentions, competition and important news in this field. Google Scholar still helps me to identify relevant research papers. I consulted many sources (and I can recommend nomoregoogle.com as a starting point), but these two are hard to replace. Please recommend me paid solutions that don’t cost more than a hundred bucks per month.

4. The final challenge is moving my blog and existing posts off Medium. I need to own the content on my own domain and I can’t accept the trackers Medium uses now to collect data from readers. For the destination NoSurveillance.com, the domain I use for my email now seems like a logical choice; I hope I won’t grow dissatisfied with the name by the time I start the transfer. As for framework, Ghost is an attractive option, but it is priced for business use (note: it has free self-hosted version), write.as would be my pick right now. I’ll need to commit the time and do this before I publish my next post. Sorry Medium!

It’s hard to make time for changes like this. Taking the first steps seem daunting due to deep emotional connections, convenience and the sense it will be very challenging to let these things go. Habits are hard to change. I won’t end this piece by saying my life become instantly better, I’m more relaxed and I feel 5 years younger. But I’m definitely happy that my personal information, searches, locations and messages won’t be stored and mined for profit.

I’d like to encourage you, the reader of this post to start the ditching process right now and share your experience. If you are already done, I’m happy to invite you to our online support group to discuss further challenges and experiences.

As for the last point and the title of this post…how do you exactly start a support group? Well, how do you start any group online? On Facebook! Wait, no.. Google Groups! OK. I don’t know. I guess all I have in my toolkit is phpBB from the times before this two. Let’s start with a Telegram group. Join in, ask questions, share articles or guides or just your experiences. There is exactly 1 people in this group at the time of writing; I’m sure being the second is not an easy role, but I hope you’ll take that leap and we can start something useful together.

edit: I’ve closed down the group as that experiment has run its course. I’m happy to connect through email, write to viktor at nosurveillance.com.