As the title says. Just deleted my google account. Next step is the degoogled phone. Anybody any experience with Volla?

      • Corduroy_Pillows_Making_Headlines [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        22 days ago

        I actually wrote a whole (free) book about it, haha! (I’m a retired journalist.) In short, I got tired of feeling like I was always being followed and watched. I also disliked the way the big tech companies have been taking over U.S. politics. I was proved right after the last election and updated the book to reflect the new administration. And so many more reasons! I also quit Microsoft and Amazon, most of Meta (I have some friends in other countries who only use Whatsapp), and am working on Apple.

  • winety@lemmy.zip
    5·
    23 days ago

    Did you use Gmail? If so, how did switching various accounts to another email address go?

    • All Europeans 🇪🇺@social.vivaldi.net
      10·
      23 days ago

      @winety @cauthon117

      You can start by creating a new email address with another provider.

      Then, go to your Gmail settings and set it to redirect all new email that comes into your Gmail mailbox to your new email address.

      Gradually, you sign in to your favorite sites and replace your Gmail address with the new one. If you’re subscribed to a lot of things, it can be overwhelming to do this all at once. So do it for your most important accounts first, and change the others as you go. :)

      • technomad@slrpnk.netEnglish
        16·
        23 days ago

        Password managers make it pretty easy to see which websites have the old address too 👍

      • Renohren
        2·
        23 days ago

        I understand it makes things easy. I’m not a fan of that though. I know if you send mail from your new address to someone using gmail, google will get that address. But the robots have to then create a new advertising profile corresponding to that address and that profile is empty . If you tell google send it all to this new address, then google can already stuff the profile of your new address with the info from your gmail account. (And no: robots are stupid because there are hundreds of new emails created every second, they don’t understand that name.surname@gmail.com = name.surname@anyothermail.com)

        You have to change one after the other the emails in each important account you have (friends, family, employer, governmental agencies, ethical brands) and keep the ones you suspect of being sellers of your ID have the now secondary gmail one.

    • Pittthewelder@mastodon.world
      2·
      23 days ago

      @winety @cauthon117 by the time I had cancelled all of the American selling sites. Travel booking sites. Hotel booking sites. Airlines and car hire sites plus all sources of media. I found it really easy to shut out all Google software, exclude AI And rediscover my freedom. Saved a fortune every month and now can afford to buy loads more stuff from all those free trade countries :lidl_woozy_terminator:

      • cauthon117@lemmy.zipOP
        3·
        23 days ago

        Getting rid of YouTube is like freeing up two hours of my daily schedule. And yeah it’s absolutely eye opening seeing all those services one subscribes to without even giving it a second thought.

  • console.log(bathing_in_bismuth)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

    Keep blocking ads and VPN up, use a generic user agent. Google will create a ghost profile and they’ll be able to link it to your old data eventually. Or even if they don’t, they still know who you are because you had a Google account, and by your browsing habbits