Here we can see, “How to Remove Google From Your Life”
Quitting Google
STEP 1: Switch Search Engines
Google’s namesake program may be a font of data about everything you think about and do online. For example, Google “personalizes” your search results by analyzing your past searches and, therefore, the links you’ve clicked – albeit you’re not signed in to a Google account.
So, you would like to prevent Googling on Google.com, meaning changing the default program on your browser and your phone to DuckDuckGo or Bing. That’s certainly quite one click, but it shouldn’t take longer than five minutes approximately to work out.
However, if you plan to use another program, you’ll find Google’s competition underwhelming. That’s because Google enjoys many advantages – including vast financial resources and access to troves of knowledge – that make it very difficult for competitors to challenge Google within the program market significantly.
STEP 2: Stop Using the Chrome Browser
Google’s leading browser, employed by quite 60% of desktop internet users, channels a huge amount of knowledge about your activities back to the corporate.
If you’re signed in to Chrome, you’re also signed in to any Google service you access through that browser, like Gmail, YouTube, or Google Maps. As a result, any searches you conduct are automatically stored in your Google account alongside your browsing data, location history, and other personal information. Google may use any of this information to personalize search results and target you with ads.
So, plow ahead and sign off of Google Chrome and any of your Google accounts. Off Google’s radar? Nope.
Even when you’re not logged in, Google still associates search terms together with your IP address, location, cookies from partner services, and other pc “fingerprint” characteristics to make your profile.
Use Firefox or another browser instead.
STEP 3: Delete your Gmail account.
Delete your Gmail account. That hurt? Oh, and once you do this, don’t forget to delete all of the opposite Google services tied to that account. For example, if you’ve got a Gmail account, you may have an account with YouTube, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Hangouts, Blogger, and other Google services.
When you sign in to Gmail, you’re automatically logged in to all other Google services, including YouTube, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Search. Google then treats you as one signed-in user across all their products, making it easier to trace your online habits.
Google automatically stores search histories, YouTube viewing habits, email metadata, and other information from Google’s various products in signed-in users’ advertising profiles.
STEP 4: Dump Android
Have a smartphone without an Apple logo on the rear, a Samsung, HTC, or Motorola? You’re almost certainly using Android, Google’s mobile OS. (More than 85% percent of the world’s smartphone users have an Android device.)
Android phones prompt users to log in to a Google account during device setup. If you don’t, you’ll be unable to use most Google apps, including the Google Play store, the first gateway to third-party Android apps.
That’s why almost every Android phone or tablet is related to a Google Account.
Once you’re logged in, Google tracks your location, searches, voice commands, and use of apps and services. Google even tracks whether you’re moving and how—say, by walking, riding a bicycle, or driving during a car.
It also tracks the atmospheric pressure in your environment so it can determine your altitude. These “environmental sensors” are so accurate that Google can determine which floor you’re on during a multistory mall.
Google takes all of this information and associates it together with your private account, and uses it to focus on you with ads. Google tracks Android users with a singular Advertising ID – the mobile equivalent of tracking cookies online.
So, you’ll need to throw away your Android phone. Hopefully, you’ll afford the $1,000 for the newest iPhone.
STEP 5: Delete all Google apps from your iPhone
Google utilizes single sign-on for Apple’s iOS, too. So, when a user signs in to at least one Google app on her mobile device – like Gmail, for instance – they’re automatically signed in to all or any other Google apps. Thus, single sign-on allows Google to trace iOS users very similar to it tracks Android users. Ok, now you’ve got an iPhone. Think you’re freed from Google? No.
Sign out of Google apps on your phone and alter your app permissions to deny Google access to location services. Then, you’ll need to take Google’s word that they aren’t tracking users who’ve turned off location services – Google has gotten in trouble for doing just that within the past.
To be safe, delete all Google apps from your phone. Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Waze, Google Assistant, Nest, Chrome, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Calendar, Google Authenticator, Google Docs, Google Play, Google Earth… Google currently has several dozen mobile apps for iPhone, so make certain to urge all of them.
STEP 6: Purge other Google hardware
You’ll also get to get prevent other things that run on Google’s operating systems. For example, Android Auto, Android wearables, Android TVs, Google Home, and Chromebooks—all of them run on Google operating systems.
If you’ve got kids in class, you’ll not have the selection to dump Google devices. In 2016, Chromebooks made up 58 percent of all mobile educational devices in U.S. K-12 schools. Unless you log in as a guest, Google tracks your activity on Chromebook, too.
STEP 7: Don’t use Waze or Nest Products
Many consumers don’t know Google owns ubiquitous tech products that don’t bear the company’s name. Nest, a pacesetter in smart thermostats, security cameras, and other smart-home devices, is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It’s unclear whether Nest’s privacy policy prevents data sharing with Google, which recently absorbed Nest’s engineering team.
Waze, the favored navigation app, was acquired by Google in 2013. Waze collects “detailed location, travel and route information” from all users, no matter whether or not they’re signed in to the app. Waze also asks to access users’ contacts and integrate with social networks.
Google owns all Waze account data.
STEP 8: Don’t visit the house of anyone with Nest Products or Google Home
Google has patented technologies that might allow its smart home products to make unique voice profiles for a person during a home. they might allow Google to spot visitors and ascertain their “gender, age, fashion-taste, style, mood, known languages, preferred activities, then forth.”
One patent describes combining browser search history with a picture on a user’s T-shirt to infer an interest within the actor Will Smith.
So next time you attend a friend’s house, conduct a full inspection of their thermostats and smoke detectors and check all rooms for any Google Homes. There’s an honest chance your friends own one. Nest has sold quite 11 million devices since 2011, and Google averaged sales of “more than one Google Home device every second” during the 2017 season.
While you’re at it, you’ll also need new friends.
STEP 9: Don’t email anyone with a Gmail account
Deleting your own Gmail account doesn’t stop Google from using its email service to collect information about you. While Google recently announced that it might stop analyzing the contents of email for advertising purposes, it still scans email metadata: information about the sender, receiver, date, etc.
Furthermore, Google has developed email metadata to create “implicit social graphs” that map user relationships. So albeit you don’t have a Gmail account of your own, Google appears to understand who your friends are.
One complication: It’s not always easy to inform who features a Gmail account, as they’ll not have gmail.com in their name. You’ll need to do some serious research before sending that email—don’t roll in the hay by email.
STEP 10: Don’t call or text anyone who has an Android phone
Android keeps track of who you’re lecture and backs up tons of the small print to Google. So if you contact someone with an Android phone, don’t put an excessive amount of faith in your friend’s phone to keep your communications private.
For example, until 2015, Android users did not have much control over the precise data that apps could access on their phones. As a result, many Android users unwittingly gave third-party apps – most notably Facebook – access to their contacts, call logs and even text messages. But, of course, that goes for anyone who texted or called them, too.
And don’t be so sure Google isn’t reading your text messages. Google Allo, a messaging app used on Android phones, stores users’ text messages and scans their contents to “improve services.”
STEP 11: Don’t use the online
Even once you use a particular browser and program, Google still tracks you across the online. So without knowing it, you’re presumably encountering a Google product whenever you employ the online.
Around 80% of web domains within the Alexa top 1 million use Google technology to display ads through Google or watch traffic using Google Analytics. Whenever you happen across one among the sites, Google places a tracking “cookie” on your device to follow you across the web.
Even if you’re not signed in to a Google service, Google will build a “signed-out” profile of your interests supported by the websites you visit.
Signed-out users can close up ads personalization for every browser session, but ad tracking will switch back on whenever you clear your cookies, so be vigilant. Some browsers give users a “Do not track” setting. Seems pretty clear, right? Unfortunately, “Do not track” mechanisms are essentially voluntary guidelines, and advertisers are liberal to ignore them.
So, to confirm that Google isn’t tracking you, you got to stop using the online. Sorry.
Learn How to Remove Google From Your Life Forever With These 5 Tools
These websites are on a mission to assist you in ditching Google forever and finding great alternatives to each Google product.
Fed up with Google’s privacy misadventures and random service closures? These websites are on a mission to assist you to ditch Google forever and find great alternatives to each product and repair.
As great as several of Google’s products are, sometimes it’s difficult to believe the corporate has its users’ best interests at the bottom. It’s regularly mired in privacy-related controversies and heavily criticized for the way it collects data. And often, wonderfully good service or app is pack up, leaving users scrambling for alternatives.
1. No More Google (Web): Privacy Friendly Alternatives to Google
If all you would like is a simple list of the simplest options to ditch Google, head to No More Google. This website focuses on privacy-friendly alternatives to major products, ranked by user votes. It is a simple list though, don’t search for pros and cons here.
There are many ways Google is tracking you, so No More Google’s focus is to recommend apps and services that do not track you. Currently, it suggests alternatives for Google Chrome, Chrome passwords, Search, Analytics, Docs, Sheets, Maps, AdWords, Authenticator, Blogger, DNS, Drive, Finance, Flights, Hangouts, Images, Poly, Scholar, Translate, Weather, Gmail, and YouTube.
The website got tons of attention on Product Hunt, and thus several users have actively voted on the simplest apps to use instead. With this easy upvote system, you’ll pick an app that supported the favored consensus.
2. Nomoogle (Chrome, Firefox): Extension to Prompt Google Alternatives
You can plan not to use Google products, but it isn’t easy to implement it. After years of being familiar with them, it’s almost a habit to look on Google or find a location on Google Maps. Nomoogle reminds you to settle on a unique path once you lapse.
The extension is out there for both Chrome and Firefox, but in fact, it asks you first to ditch Chrome. The Chrome extension must be installed manually and is not available on the Chrome Web Store.
Once installed, Nomoogle will issue a pop-up whenever you mistakenly visit a Google site. Then, paired with a funny GIF, it’ll suggest alternatives. Click one, and it will execute an equivalent search query or another task therein app. It’s among the only ways to quit your Google habit.
Dive into Nomoogle’s settings, and you will find two modes: strict and redirect. Redirect mode will automatically send you to an alternate website, while strict mode blocks Google pages.
3. The Google Cemetery (Web): Alternatives for Dead Google Products
Google is infamous for killing perfectly functional, much-beloved apps and services. A couple of examples include Google Reader, Inbox by Gmail, Hangouts, and Trips. Does one need to use a service by this company, carefully set it up how you would like, then have it yanked away?
The Google Cemetery may be a digital graveyard for all their finished products and a repository of alternatives. The list provides a brief description for every suggested app and shows you who it had been created by. Users also can vote for the apps and submit their alternative suggestions.
The website also tracks which Google products are close to being killed, and therefore the countdown may be helpful, thanks to knowing once you need to migrate your data. Plus, it’s quite fun to examine how and why Google killed something, also as people’s reaction to that.
4. r/DeGoogle (Web): Reddit Community to Expel Google From Your Life
You are not alone. There’s a whole community of individuals like you who want to get rid of Google from their lives entirely. And as always, such support from people that are browsing an equivalent journey makes things easier.
There are currently quite 19,000 members who all share their tips and experiences of the method. It is a good place to urge specific advice about problems you would possibly face while quitting Google apps because the likelihood is that somebody else has skilled an equal thing.
The community also keeps au courant new ways in which Google could be infiltrating privacy and suggests alternatives. Unfortunately, since there are not any official discussion forums for “de-googling,” this is often the simplest you’ll get.
5. How I Fully Quit Google and You Can Too (Article): Real-Life Experiences
The big leap to completely get obviate Google can seem daunting. Will you discover the proper alternatives which you enjoy using? Is it getting to be tough, or maybe impossible? In 2018, journalist Nithin Coca decided to quit Google and chronicled his journey.
While there are several articles about quitting Google, this is often the simplest one I read. First, Coca takes you thru his thinking process, how he evaluated various alternative software, unexpected challenges, and so on. Then, he provides compelling reasons for away and why he chose the app, he cursed with within the end.
Plus, Coca seems to be among the few people that have stuck to his guns. After a year from the introductory post, he wrote a follow-up on living outside the Google bubble for a year, titled My Year Without Google. Both the articles are worth finding out to understand what you’re certain of and how to travel about it.
User Questions:
- Why is Google bad?
Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”; this mission, and therefore the means wont to accomplish it, has raised concerns among the company’s critics. Much of the criticism pertains to issues that haven’t yet been addressed by cyber law.
- Is Google or Apple more evil?
Google has vast influence over the knowledge economy, the media, advertising, and therefore the mobile market, where its Android OS makes it much more dominant than Apple.
- Is Google Microsoft owned?
Google and Microsoft are both American multinational technology companies. They’re known by about what they do and are, might not be clear. Both companies have different products and services that can be developed by them or acquired from other companies.
- HOW TO: Remove yourself from ALL background check websites. because of LawyerCT.
HOW TO: Remove yourself from ALL background check websites. Thanks to LawyerCT. from technology
- LPT: Your browser’s Private mode does NOTHING to guard you against Fingerprinting. Nor does employing a VPN, deleting Cookies, or removing Cached files. there’s almost nothing you’ll do, so never assume you’ve got privacy.
LPT: Your browser’s Private mode does NOTHING to protect you from Fingerprinting. Nor does using a VPN, deleting Cookies, or removing Cached files. There is almost nothing you can do, so never assume you have privacy. from LifeProTips
