The adage is that, if a service online is free, then the reality is that you, the end user, are either the target (for ads) or the product (by being tracked across the internet and your data profile being sold) or both. About a year ago, after becoming increasingly frustrated with this erosion of digital privacy and the deliberate worsening of popular services to help enrich the already-obscenely wealthy, I decided to cut as many digital cords as I could. Especially to get away from AI. A sort of do-over.

I made the mistake many years ago of trying to ‘simplify’ by favoring Google over other products. If some type of service (chat, email, music, etc.) had multiple options, I would generally use Google’s offering. It helped that, a decade ago, many of their services and apps were at least passable, if not outright good. The loss of Google Reader should have been a sign.

Whatever, anyway, I was determined to reach the finish line before the end of 2025, and coincidentally reached it on December 25, deleting my twenty one year old Google account that day.

(There are still a small handful of Google products I use, mostly being Blogger and Maps. I do hope to find alternatives to these sometime. The goal was not to never use Google, but to end my dependence on it and other privacy-invading developers.)

For a large number of the items on my checklist, I learned how to set up a NAS (network attached storage, i.e. an enormous hard drive in my basement) and a few connected devices. My photos, videos, documents, etc., are now stored locally. Lights, thermostat, doorbell, and other smart home devices are controlled locally.

Here are some of the things I have switched to.

  • Aegis — two factor authentication
  • Bitwarden — password manager
  • Ecobee — thermostat
  • Fastmail — email, contacts, calendar
  • Firefox — web browser (Android)
  • Home Assistant — home automation
  • MusicBee — music (Windows)
  • Obsidian — notes
  • Reolink — home camera security
  • Signal — instant messaging
  • Symfonium — music (Android)
  • Synology — file storage
  • Zen — web browser (Windows)
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