How to Reduce Your Google Footprint

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2022 is to reduce my Google footprint – to try to de-Google my life as best I can – and hopefully inspire you to do the same. In today’s show, I’ll talk about replacing Google’s many communications apps (Meet, Hangouts, Chat, Talk), Google Authenticator (the Kleenex of 2FA apps), Google Maps and Waze, and YouTube.

In security and privacy news: ISPs in the UK are complaining about Apple’s Private Relay feature; the Federal Trade Commission has a new weapon to fight algorithmic data mining; if someone tricks you into sending them money via Zelle, your bank probably won’t give it back; Russia has issued a state-sponsored “trusted root CA” that could undermine privacy in Russia for a decade; the EFF weighs in on attempts to cut off Russia (and its citizens) from the internet; DuckDuckGo took a controversial step to down-rate Russian mis/disinformation in its search results; Google is mining info from receipts and invoices in your email; and Google is also mining data from your dialer and messaging apps on Android.

Article Links

1. UK Network Operators Target iCloud Private Relay in Complaint to Regulator https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/13/uk-network-operators-target-icloud-private-relay/ 
2. The FTC’s new enforcement weapon spells death for algorithms https://www.protocol.com/policy/ftc-algorithm-destroy-data-privacy 
3. Fraud is flourishing on Zelle. The banks say it’s not their problem. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/fraud-is-flourishing-on-zelle-the-banks-say-its-not-their-problem/ 
4. You Should Not Trust Russia’s New “Trusted Root CA” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/you-should-not-trust-russias-new-trusted-root-ca 
5. Wartime Is a Bad Time To Mess With the Internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/wartime-bad-time-mess-internet 
6. DuckDuckGo down-ranks sites spreading Russian propaganda https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/duckduckgo-down-ranks-sites-spreading-russian-propaganda/ 
7. Gmail tracking: Google keeps records of everything you buy. Here is how to delete this information. https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/gmail-tracks-everything-you-buy/ 
8. Google to make changes to apps after TCD study finds privacy issues https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/google-to-make-changes-to-apps-after-tcd-study-finds-privacy-issues-1.4826225 
9. De-Google My Life, Part 3: https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/de-google-my-life-part-3/

Further Info

• Podcast 5th Anniversary Giveaway! https://firewallsdontstopdragons.com/5th-anniversary-giveaway/ 
• My Lock & Code podcast interview: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/podcast/2022/03/de-googling-carey-parkers-and-your-life-lock-and-code-s03e06/ 
• Data Privacy for Cars: https://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2021/09/13/driving-data-privacy-for-cars/ 
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