Whether you’re concerned about the lack of control over your data, invasive advertising or surveillance, there are many reasons to shake off big tech services. This is a series of tutorials to help you get Google out of your private life and make it easier for your friends and family to do so as well. There are free and paid, open source, and private alternatives for almost every digital service. You may need to put in a bit of effort, but we promise you: you, your loved ones, and our society will be better off.
Private correspondence should be private!
Decades ago, people would have been horrified if a mail courier opened every envelope and read every message that passed through their hands. But this is just what has become the norm in the digital age! Big tech providers like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, or Microsoft sell your data to third parties: when you use their service, you become the product!1
Choose a privacy respecting email service
When choosing a privacy-respecting email service, you should first favor open source ones, as open source reflects transparency. Some provide basic services for free, others charge a small monthly payment. Paid services tend to be more reliable. In going this route, you transfer trust to this third party, but one whose business model is to safeguard your data, not monetize it, since they want to sell you more storage. Many internet service providers (ISP) also offer email services, but only use these if you trust yours, as many of these will monetize your data, habits, etc., and they may already have far too much data on you.
Many email providers already have calendar and contact integration. Check with them and see if they have their own mobile tools for integrating with the address book and the calendar. If they use standards like calDav and cardDav, syncing calendars and contacts (an address book) should be easy to do. Here are some options for degoogling your inbox:
Mailbox.org
Mailbox is a 100% green energy, Germany-based email provider. Plans start from €1/month, which includes aliases and 2GB of mail storage. They support IMAP, and their onion service allows connecting a mail client via Tor. They support OpenPGP, which means contents (but not metadata) are end-to-end encrypted. In addition to standard payment methods, they accept cryptocurrencies and cash mail-ins for anonymous accounts. Mailbox provides this guide for folks migrating from Gmail.
Posteo.de
Posteo is a 100% green energy, Berlin-based email provider. Posteo supports IMAP and POP3 protocols, so it will be available for almost any device or client. The plans start at €1 per month. In addition to standard payment methods, they accept cash mail-ins for anonymous accounts. They provide this guide for people leaving Gmail.
Protonmail
The Protonmail free plan comes with 500MB of mail storage, which you can increase to 1GB for free. To use an external client like Thunderbird, you must pay for a premium plan. They have integrated OpenPGP, which means contents (but not metadata) are end-to-end encrypted. In addition to standard payment methods, they accept cryptocurrencies and cash mail-ins for anonymous accounts. They offer a migration tool from Gmail which is very simple to use. From Settings → “Import via easy switch”:
and then choose “Import via Easy Switch”:
Tuta
Tuta (formerly Tutanota) is a German email provider specializing in privacy. They offer a free account with 1GB of storage, and do not provide a guide or migration tool from Gmail, but these instructions also work, just change the account provider.
More options…
There are countless other email providers. Many cater to a local niche, and if you can use a local one, all the better! Here are some 50+ in the francophone world, for example. Others do their work out of their passion for activism and privacy, like riseup.net or disroot.org. Many also provide you with many other services, such as a Nextcloud cloud storage account (an alternative to Google Drive or iCloud). We will cover that in a future number of Degoogle your private life!
Done degoogling your inbox? Brag about it!
By removing your email communications from servers at Gmail, Hotmail, Apple, or Microsoft servers, you are making a great step forward in terms of personal privacy. You no longer have a big tech data broker snooping through your messages. Well, not entirely… What about those messages sent to someone still using those services? Please share this article with family and loved ones, as Privacy is a team sport!
Remember: Email is not fully private
Despite the fact that having an email is practically a necessity for using any online service, it isn’t the best medium for person-to-person conversations, as the actual content of the messages is usually shared with both providers. Even when end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is used, the metadata (sender, recipient subject, etc.) is exposed to both providers and often to intermediaries as well. Rather than using email to directly message people, consider using an instant messaging medium that supports forward secrecy (an improved version of End-to-end encryption, or E2EE). Centralized messengers include Signal Messenger, and there are also decentralized solutions like Simplex chat or Briar.
What about your mobile device?
Even before installing any apps or accounts on your device, the stock Android (or iOS) operating system already starts profiling your behavior, sending data back to Google’s (or Apple’s) servers. One big step you can do with your mobile device is to degoogle it entirely. Many devices can be degoogled with a custom operating system, offering improvements in performance, security, privacy, and sustainability.
Be smarter than your phone!
At iodé, we are specialized in developing private and secure software for mobiles. If you’d like to buy a device with iodéOS preinstalled, please visit our shop! These sales help pay for the development of the software. That said, you can also DIY install: iodéOS is open source, available for installation on 40+ devices.
We are passionate about helping people regain control over their technology, and we offer this set of tutorials to help people overcome their dependency on big tech.
Coming up next: Degoogle your private life # 2 – contacts and calendar.
- Or as Jaron Lanier famously said “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.” ↩︎
