2019-08-11 00:00:00
It is actually easy to switch to apps and services that don't spy and track you on the internet
I have written about apps and services that let you do exactly the same things as services provided by Google, but with one key difference: those tools don't spy on you like Google does. It is possible to find a good alternative almost to every Google product, but what about all the other services that we use on the internet? Here are more tools for people who don't want to hand over their private data to advertisers, other businesses, governments, or criminals.
Privacytools.io has collected categorized lists of apps and services that are really good at tasks they have been designed to do, and they care about internet users' privacy as well. At Privacytools web site you can view, for instance, operating systems, software applications, VPN services, hosting companies, email services, calendar apps, and messaging channels that don't sell your data to the highest bidder.
The key tool for most internet users is a web browser. Even if you spend plenty of time in Facebook, Pinterest or Youtube mobile applications, you access web pages and search engines in a browser app . Power users on a PC may have multiple web browsers open as they research and work on a project. Privacytools recommends Firefox, Tor and Brave for privacy-conscious users, but these browsers are not the only choices.
I ran one of the recommended browser tests on my PC. The Panopticlick test developed by EFF is designed to do what Facebook, Google and other businesses that make money on your private data do. It tries to suck your data, track you, and show ads. In this test on a Windows PC, one of the recommended browsers, Brave, scored lower points than Operaand Vivaldi that I'm using as well.
On an Android mobile device Opera, however, didn't prevent spying as effectively as Qwant and DuckDuckGo mobile browsers.
The best thing with both DuckDuckGo and Qwant is that they are search engines that don't spy and track people who are searching for information on the internet.
Other search engines that respect privacy are, for instance, StartPage and Searx.
