Sunday Walk 48 – Independence Day

Bee Up Close

Happy Fourth of July! I am in the process of moving away from big tech. Here’s what I’ve done so far.

For browser and search engine, I switched from Google Chrome to Brave with DuckDuckGo.

For email, I purchased a subscription to ProtonMail. My Gmail account is nearly inactive.

For cloud services, I canceled my subscription to Google One’s storage plan using instead my own solid state drives.

For office tools, I switched from Google Docs and Sheets to Apache Open Office.

For those interested in doing something similar, Sven Taylor provides a list of alternatives for Google products at the Restore Privacy site. There are more alternatives than I initially realized.

For social media, although I am currently inactive on Facebook and Twitter, my accounts remain open. I think it is worthwhile to interact with others in such environments. The same goes for places like Stack Exchange and Quora where I also have open, but inactive accounts. At the moment my social media focus is on MeWe and this WordPress blog.

Part of alt tech is to learn how to wear the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6). It is not just using open source software to protect one’s privacy or new platforms to avoid censorship. The user needs to get his act together. Without that armor I could still become corrupted and unwittingly corrupt others in turn.

By the next Fourth of July, God willing, I hope to be on Linux and know better how to wear that armor.

Weekly Bible Reading:  Numbers (Audio) Deuteronomy (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Numbers, Part 2 of 2, Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Blue and Yellow Flowers
Blue and Yellow Flowers

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

24 thoughts on “Sunday Walk 48 – Independence Day”

  1. Hi Frank, interesting. I also use Brave with DuckDuckGo which minimizes tracking and have my data stored on a personal solid state drive. I used to work as an administrator with Google so I am aware of the security aspect of keeping your data private. Actually, if you are physically and electronically connected to the Internet your data is still venerable. You can minimize the probability but if someone actually wants your data, and you are connected to the Internet, it can be had. I also use a Mac and stay away from Windows. What with USB drives being so inexpensive now, it is easy to keep your “private” data safe. General rule of thumb is don’t allow anything that you would not want to see published in a newspaper, in the cloud. Keep it off line, encrypted and literally disconnected from the WWW and only access it, when needed. Scary world we live in. Short story is that if you have nothing to hide you don’t have to worry about it but just be aware. Blessings!

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      1. I bought a Linux boot USB drive and plan to try Linux on some old computers. It has been decades since I used Linux last although I used to write programs for the bash shell. That will be my next step on the journey. Thank you, Dan!

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    2. Good points. That is the direction I hope to be going in. I am coming late to this realization, but it is good to have a reason to repent even of such ways. Thank you, Bruce!

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Frank, I understand completely. I have been involved in the technology world for a long time. I consult full time now but have served as a CIO previously. Personally, I have moved most of my interactions off Google to other solutions.

    I look forward to hearing more of your journey.

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  3. Frank, I am trying to figure out how to come away from WordPress. I feel like they own me and my 900+ poems. I am beginning to copy and paste them into word doc., and then plan to copy to an external flash drive. My friends have proton, and switched their phone to something. I need an organizer to sit with me and walk me through it.
    Love how you paired this with the armor of God. Mt 19:26 “Wth God, all things are possible.”
    Happy 4th! Gal 5:1.

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    1. I write my poems and stories to text files and then copy them to WordPress. I also log in a spreadsheet when and where I posted something or when something was published. It is not the best solution. I need better version control and cloud storage.

      You may be able to download what is on WordPress to get a backup copy of what you have there, but I haven’t tried that yet. I think it is also possible to use WordPress on your own servers, but I haven’t tried that either.

      The phone bothers me as well. Mine is still a 4G android device. I did not upgrade to 5G when my old phone broke. I did disable backups to Google Drive. I now copy my photos manually to my solid state drives. I am looking for other alternatives.

      I agree, “With God, all things are possible.”

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      1. Yes, it was always hoped that the internet would be a creative and genuinely connected place, but commerce have ruined that in the main, time to fight back.

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  7. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for some time now. I tried Brave for a while, but couldn’t get it to do some of the things I can with Firefox, so I still use Firefox. Maybe in another six months I’ll try Brave again.

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