nikitavoloboev/privacy-respecting

Curated List of Privacy Respecting Services and Software

Privacy Respecting

Curated List of Privacy Respecting Services and Software

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• What?
• Search Engines
• Social Networks
• Messengers
• Cloud Storage
• VPN
• Email
• Operating Systems
• Browsers
• Video Sharing
• AI Assistants
• Related

What?

This is a list of various 'free' services whose business models are to collect as much personal data about you as possible and alternatives you can use to them if you care about not losing control of your data and your privacy.

For reasons why you may want to care about this, you can read this article.

The list is separated into topics and each service or software stated gives support for why you may want to stop using the service. As well as show alternatives to these services and why you may want to switch to them.

Search Engines

⚠️ You are the product:

• Google - By 2030, You’ll Be Living in a World That’s Run by Google.
• Bing - Owned by Microsoft.
• Yandex - Russia's version of Google.

🔏 Alternatives:

• DuckDuckGo - DuckDuckGo privacy policy
• StartPage - How we protect you
• Brave Search - What is Brave Search?
• Searx - Why use Searx?
• SearXNG - Fork of SearX
• Librengine - Privacy Web Search Engine

Social Networks

⚠️ You are the product:

• Facebook - What should you think about when using Facebook?
• Instagram - Owned by Facebook.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Scuttlebutt - Scuttlebutt principles.
• Mastodon - What is Mastodon? Mastodon instances.
• Diaspora - What is Diaspora?
• Steemit - What is Steemit?
• Indieweb - Why run your own website?
• Minds - Anonymous & open-source social network with encrypted conversations. How Minds.com Protects Your Privacy.
• Chttr - Politically unbiased, privacy respecting social network.
• Pleroma - Free, federated social networking server built on open protocols. It is compatible with GNU Social, Mastodon, and many other ActivityPub implementations. Pleroma instances.
• Cent - Democratized social network built on Ethereum. What is Cent?

🥽 Private front-ends:

• Invidious - Alternative front-end to YouTube. Code.
• Piped - YouTube Alternative front-end. Code.
• Nitter - Alternative Twitter front-end. Code.
• Libreddit - Private front-end for Reddit written in Rust. Code.
• Teddit - Alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. Code.
• Bibliogram - An alternative front-end for Instagram. Code.
• Beatbump - Alternative front-end for Youtube Music. Code.

Messengers

⚠️ You are the product:

• WhatsApp - Uses Signal Protocol thus chats are E2E encrypted. However it sends entire user's contact books to FB servers. Owned by Facebook.
• Facebook Messenger - Owned by Facebook.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Signal - Uses Signal Protocol.
• Silence - Fork of Signal based on SMS instead of a server.
• Session - Session is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that minimises sensitive metadata, doesn't even require phone number to sign up.
• Element (formely Riot) - Secure decentralized chat powered by Matrix protocol.
• Threema - FAQ.
• Jami (formely Ring) - Distributed universal and secure Free Software for multimedia communications.
• Ricochet - Anonymous instant messaging.
• Briar - Peer-to-peer encrypted messaging and forums.
• Tox - Peer-to-peer serverless IM platform.
• Wire - Open-source Projet based on End-to-end encryption (server in Switzerland).
• Conversations - Built on XMPP/Jabber. List of XMPP clients for any operating system.
• Public XMPP services - Choose one, talk to any, or run your own with Prosody.
• Wickr - Encrypted Ephemeral Platform Trusted By Millions Worldwide.
• Semaphor - Encrypted, decentralized authority team chat and file sharing.

❔ Questionable:

• Keybase - End-to-end encrypted chat and Dropbox alternative. It's backend is not open source and it also got merged with Zoom
• Telegram - Uses MTProto Mobile Protocol. However group channels cannot be E2E encrypted, and private chats default to non-E2E. Telegram states that generating profit is not the end goal of the app. However, the backend is not open source (yet).

Cloud Storage

⚠️ You are the product:

• Google Drive - Centralized and owned by Google.
• OneDrive - Owned by Microsoft.

🔏 Alternatives:

• IPFS - Open source
• Syncthing - Open source.
• Seafile - About Seafile.
• Nextcloud - About Nextcloud. Self hosted + encryption app available.
• ownCloud - ownCloud Features. Self hosted + encryption app available.
• CozyCloud - Privacy and CozyCloud. Open Source + self hosted.
• SpiderOak ONE - End-to-end no-knowledge encryption, Edward Snowden endorsed!
• Tahoe-LAFS - Capability-secure, end-to-end encryption, provider-independent privacy. Storage providers cannot read stored data.
  • Least Authority - Paid personal Tahoe-LAFS grids.
  • Matador Cloud - Free global Tahoe-LAFS grid, paid services.
• Tresorit - Swiss based end-to-end encrypted cloud storage.

❔ Questionable:

• Keybase - End-to-end encrypted chat and Dropbox alternative. It's backend is not open source and it also got merged with Zoom

VPN

⚠️ You are the product:

• Any VPN that is free or keeps logs.

🔏 Alternatives:

• ProtonVPN - As a Swiss VPN provider, Proton does not log user activity or share data with third parties. Tor is also supported.
• IVPN - Gibraltar based no logs VPN which is open source, third party audited and doesn't require any personal data (not even email) to sign up. Accepts cash payments, Bitcoin, Monero, PayPal, and more.
• Mullvad - Swedish based VPN provider that retains no logs, and uses a mostly open source and transparent infrastructure available to the public. Accepts Bitcoin, anonymous cash payments via envelope, PayPal, and more.
• OVPN - Swedish provider that operates VPN servers without any hard drives, has a strict no logs policy, and publishes transparency reports. Accepts Bitcoin, anonymous cash payments, PayPal, and more.

Email

⚠️ You are the product:

• Gmail - Owned by Google.
• Outlook - Owned by Microsoft.
• Yahoo - Multiple data breaches.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Mailfence - Secure and private email-suite (About, Privacy policy, Transparency report).
• ProtonMail - Security of ProtonMail.
• Tutanota - FAQ.
• Posteo - About Posteo. Transparency Report.
• iRedMail - Be your own email provider.
• CleanEmail – Manages your mailbox – group and organize, remove, label, and archive emails. Full Privacy Policy.
• Fastmail - Email, calendars, and contacts. Privacy Policy.
• Kolab Now - Online service providing personal Kolab Groupware on desired level. Privacy Statement.
• Skiff - End-to-end encrypted email, document collaboration, wikis, and Drive. Privacy policy.
• Self-host your own Email server. Note that this route is not recommended unless you know exactly what you're doing, otherwise you might end up with terrible security on the server side.

Operating Systems

⚠️ You are the product:

• Windows - Microsoft shares Windows 10 telemetry data with third parties.
• Chrome OS - Owned by Google.
• Android (preinstalled) - Google collects meta data (phone calls, SMS) from Android phones.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Linux - Open source kernel.
• Fedora - User-friendly linux distribution
• Tails OS - Secure operating system that runs off a live USB
• Qubes OS - Operating system with strong focus on security
• iOS - iOS 10 security white paper.
• Android with LineageOS
• Android with CalyxOS - Only Pixel devices and Xiaomi Mi A2 supported.
• Android with GrapheneOS - Only Pixel devices supported.
• Android with DivestOS - LineageOS fork with increased security and privacy.
• Android with Copperhead
• Android with /e/ - Fully ungoogled mobile phone OS. Privacy Facts
• macOS - Apple privacy.
• FreeBSD - Privacy Policy.
• PureOS - Secure and freedom respecting. Soon also on smartphone: Librem5.

Browsers

⚠️ You are the product:

• Google Chrome - Owned by Google.
• Edge Browser - Owned by Microsoft.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Firefox - Firefox privacy.
• Brave - About Brave.
• Tor Browser - Tor (anonymity network) wiki.
• Ungoogled Chromium - More about Ungoogled Chromium.
• Kiwi Browser — Chromium fork with support for Chrome extensions, enhanced privacy, ad/tracking blocking, and misc improvements. Android only.
• Bromite - Bromite is a Chromium fork with support for ad blocking and enhanced privacy. Available only for android devices.

❔ Questionable:

• Vivaldi - Non-privacy settings by default, partially proprietary. It does install per a Unique User ID

Video Sharing

⚠️ You are the product:

• YouTube - Owned by Google.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Odysee - Privacy Policy.
• DTube - What is DTube?
• Peertube - Peertube instances.
• BitChute - Peer to peer video sharing platform.

AI Assistants

⚠️ You are the product:

• Amazon Alexa - Owned by Amazon.
• Google Home - Owned by Google.
• IBM Watson - Owned by IBM.

🔏 Alternatives:

• Mycroft - Open-source AI assistant, range of hardware options.
• Apple Siri and HomePod - Apple Privacy.

Related

• Security Checklist - Open source checklist of resources designed to improve your online privacy and security.
• Privacy Tools - Encryption against global mass surveillance. (GitHub)
• Digital Privacy Tips
• Personal Security Checklist - Another list of tips for protecting privacy & security
• PRISM Break - Opt out of global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora. (GitLab)
• List of best privacy practices
• Privacy awesome list
• Awesome self hosted
• Self Hosted Subreddit
• Adversaries and Anonymity Systems: The Basics
• Will a VPN Protect Me? Defining Your Threat Model
• Bring Privacy Back
• Leaving the Cloud
• Secure Email - Overview of projects working on next-generation secure email.
• Terms of Service Didn't Read - User rights initiative to rate and label website terms & privacy policies.
• Cryptomator - Free client-side encryption for your cloud files. Open Source
• Bitmessage - P2P Based email-like platform. Uses proof-of-work to secure communications.
• Rebooting the Web of Trust - Research on building the next generation of Web-Of-Trust based identity systems.
• Awesome Humane Tech - Improve society using this list of humane tech projects.
• Security in a Box - Tutorials on how to stay private online and install privacy-preserving apps.
• My Shadow - FOSS alternative apps that respect your privacy.
• EFF SDD - EFF's surveillance self-defense guide.
• Restore privacy - Privacy-preserving alternatives to popular Google products.
• EPIC privacy tools - EPIC's collection of privacy-preserving tools.
• Secured.fyi - A ranking of paid and free services based on security and privacy attributes.
• That one privacy site - A detailed privacy-oriented comparison between VPN and E-mail providers.
• Disroot - A platform providing online services based on principles of freedom, privacy, federation and decentralization.
• Btfy - Privacy-focused custom url shortener and branded links
• yeeturl - End to end encrypted and privacy-respecting URL shortener.
• Awesome Privacy
• privacy.sexy - Open-source tool enforce privacy & security best-practices on desktop operating systems.
• EncryptedList - List of services that offer zero-knowledge or end-to-end encryption 🔐.

privacy-respecting's Issues

New Mail Suggestion: Migadu

Migadu Email Review

Basic Information

Name: Migadu
Category: Email
URL: https://www.migadu.com/
Jurisdiction: Switzerland
Source: https://github.com/migadu/

Description

Migadu is an independent email hosting from Switzerland.

Encryption:

• Allow users to use their own domain name.
• Supports standard email access protocols. (IMAP, POP3, SMTP).

Privacy:

• Doesn't require personally identifiable information (PII) besides username and password.
• Privacy policy that meets the requirements defined by the GDPR

Security:

• Allows 2FA,
• Supports DNSSEC
• Website uses HTTPS and Subresource Integrity
• Registered on the EFF's STARTTLS-Everywhere
• No TLS errors/vulnerabilities when being profiled by tools such as Hardenize or Qualys SSL Labs, this includes certificate related errors, poor or weak ciphers suites, weak DH parameters such as those that led to Logjam.
• Valid DMARC, SPF and DKIM

Trust:

• Public-facing leadership or ownership.

Marketing:

• Complies with DNT, no poor claims.

Issue's:

• Doesn't support DANE
• No valid MTA-STS and TLS-RPT policy
• googletagmanager.com is present on the homepage

Why I am making the suggestion

They are down to earth with the offering of unlimited domains, storage, etc. I would give them full marks for philosophical, ethical, and technical merits.

Taken from Drew DeVault on mastodon.

My connection with the software

I have no connection with the software, however I am enthusiastic about it.

• I will keep the issue up-to-date if something I have said changes or I remember a connection with the software.

Add GNU Ring to messengers

It would be nice to add the GNU Ring messenger. http://ring.cx

Decentralised, blockchain based app, anonymous and open source ☺️

matador.cloud

https://matador.cloud/ is invalid at the moment

Remove snips.ai

Snips.ai got bought by sonos and doesnt offer its service anymore.

Link to apple's real privacy policy

https://www.apple.com/privacy/ is nothing but a marketing campaign.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ is the real privacy policy.

Yeeturl doesn't exist anymore. Consider removing it from the list

Yeeturl webpage says "Due to many issues we've had with Glitch (such as slow loading times, project hours and no way to pull code from a git repository), yeeturl is now hosted on Repl.it. Please use yeeturl.github.io instead." However, even the new link doesn't even exist. I don't see any harm in removing it from the list.

Might want to reevaluate Startpage.

A wonderful professor Sir Martyn Thomas first made made take Startpage seriously and I preferred them over DDG because of nativity, but then Techrights pointed out they were sold over a year ago to some data collecting company.
Startpage itself claims to maintain it's control over it's privacy policy, but it has became harder to trust them.
My research is just other peoples research (and superficially so).

So just a heads up.
https://blog.privacytools.io/delisting-startpage/

New VPNs

IVPN - they even ran an article saying don't use a VPN, pretty good company.
Azire - all the desired features of a privacy-respecting VPN, only problem is that they haven't been audited.

GitHub?

Being a bit meta here, but ownership of github (and the entire Chad’s garage problem) should probably be pointed out, too?

Include note taking software section

I would like to suggest that we include a note taking software section to the list. Digital notebooks are ubiquitous and something that most of us need. Therefore, including privacy-respecting alternatives in the list can help many people to protect their data further. e.g. #42

What do you think about it?

Update Messengers

Delist: Keybase, Silence and Telegram.
Add: Status - Encrypted instant messenger with an integrated Ethereum wallet (cryptocurrency) that also includes support for DApps (decentralized apps) (web apps in a curated store). Uses the Waku protocol (a fork of Whisper) for P2P communication. Only available for iOS and Android.

Add iCab Mobile on iOS

I've been using the ultra-modifiable iOS app since January 2021, and I'm delighted with this wonderful alternative privacy-friendly (configurable) browser

Website: http://www.icab-mobile.de/
App: https://apps.apple.com/app/icab-mobile-web-browser/id308111628

Pale Moon, Otter, gab.ai

Could you add Pale Moon and Otter to the list of browsers?
Here's some info about Pale Moon:
General Information: http://www.palemoon.org/info.shtml
FAQ: http://www.palemoon.org/faq.shtml
Rumor Control: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21626&p=164710

One of the devs is sometimes kind of rude to people who regurgitate myths about the browser, which has given them a lot of bad PR lately, but I really don't think it's fair to judge the community as a whole based on his behavior as some do.

The Otter browser is a project by former Opera devs to create a browsing experience like that of Opera, powered by the WebKit engine, qt5, and eventually Chrome's add-on system. It's kind of buggy at the moment, but may at least be something to look out for in the relatively near future. The website is here: https://otter-browser.org/

Lastly, I'd like to mention Gab at https://gab.com/ which is more or less Twitter without the ridiculous amounts of censorship. While it is often called an "echo chamber for the far-right" so are Minds and BitChute, and the claims are just as false for Gab as for them.

"Owned by Microsoft"

I love this list, but I notice the only reason Microsoft's products are in the "bad" list is "owned by Microsoft". They aren't really too bad nowadays on privacy, especially compared to Google, or how they used to be. It just seems a little biased to me, especially since Apple Siri is included in the good list, but they were using contractors to listen to audio snippets without being clear, etc.

What about GitHub? Microsoft is taking over.....should GitLab be an alternative?

I know this a strange one, but should there be an alternative for GitHub now because Microsoft is taking over? I might slowly move to GitLab.

New Category Suggestion: Private Frontends

Many social platforms are closed-sourced and invasive. Though, some have private alternative front-ends that allow users to browse the site free of trackers, ads and cookies by proxying their web traffic through the alternative client.

Examples:

• YouTube -> Invidious
• Twitter -> Nitter
• Instagram -> Bibliogram
• Reddit -> Libreddit

This would be a great addition to provide resources to those who don't want to ditch a platform altogether (services like YouTube and Twitter are especially hard to avoid on the internet) but still want to browse them privately.

Revise Vivaldi as a good alternative

Vivaldi browser has an UUID, that's a Unique User ID.

It does install per a Unique User ID

See: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/11413/privacy-does-v-create-unique-installation-id-for-google-other-privacy-mods-of-srware-s-iron

Is there an alternative to Google Keep?

Google Keep is a pretty nice app to keep notes. But since it is made by Google, I do have my doubts when it comes to privacy. Are there any nice once out there that has good UI and has really good privacy?

Logo Proposal

Hello sir, I'm a graphic designer and I would love to contribute to your project with a logo. This is completely free, take it as a contribution. In case you agree I would be presenting sketches and you will be choosing/modifying the aspects you like more so we could work on the perfect logo for your project together.

Let me know what do you think? best regards :)

Cooperate

Exchange content with https://github.com/KevinColemanInc/awesome-privacy for maximum information quality.

Operating Systems

Depending on how much privacy you want to suggest at the OS level, you might consider advertising Tails and/or Qubes:

• https://tails.boum.org/
• https://www.qubes-os.org/

Apple considered privacy-respecting

This list seems to implicitly assume that Apple respects privacy, which is at odds with the FSF's analysis.

privacy-respecting repo

Check out prism-break.org

https://prism-break.org/en/all/

Don't link to the Guardian WhatsApp "backdoor" article

WhatsApp - Uses Signal Protocol but logs all the metadata around messages

The Guardian article linked there was wildly misleading and bad journalism, as denounced by the authors of Signal themselves, amongst many other experts. Also, it has nothing to do with "logging all the metadata".

Please don't spread that unfortunate FUD.

• https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/whatsapp-signal-and-dangerously-ignorant-journalism/
• http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687

*BSD's and other OS's missing.

There are several BSD's missing, including OpenBSD (probably the most secure OS in the universe), and other Unices (pl. of Unix) like the illumos family. Non-Unices like ReactOS which tries to be a free Windows replacement, Haiku, KolibriOS. Just browse Wikipedia for a more complete list.

At least, if you mention FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD should be mentioned.
Allow me to include GhostBSD, NomadBSD and FuryBSD which are desktop friendly/live takes on FreeBSD. OS108 for NetBSD.
The BSD's have a truly free license compared to GNU's ones (the GPL's) which are free, but with restrictions (hence restrictive licenses, versus BSD's totally free, as in a gift, licenses).