It's a new life for me / and I'm feeling good.
(midwest.social)
muxika
PrivacyI am in the process of figuring out which things are still tied to my old Google email address (I have been forwarding my emails from it for the last year and changing each account to unique aliases as I find them) so I can finally delete it for good.
I'm working towards doing this. It'll take a bit of setting up though
The other day I tried making a google account for an assignment my prof wanted (bro wanted presentation to be specifically on google slides and video uploaded on youtube). Google now required you to have a physical smartphone to make an account, you have to press a button that sends some kind of api that sends google an sms from your phone.
So I just told my friend to upload it for me
Bullshit
That's some bullshit. Google Classroom should be included by the district if they want you to use Google apps.
He's a techbro kind of guy
Without the pay...
Yep. A failed tech bro
This would be me if only there was some way to easily determine where I have used my @gmail address in the past 20 years. I have already set up another address that I own myself and have moved a bunch of stuff over, but I don't want to lose access to the rest of my accounts tied to my Gmail address.
Although I suppose I could go through my Keepass and list all logins that use my gmail, then chip away at that....
You can setup a rule in Gmail, and tag them when they get to your new inbox. Use Gmail to add a junk CC, or something if the new provider doesn't have strong automation capabilities.
Then use the tags to go back and change the email on file (if necessary).
After a year if they haven't contacted you then they obviously aren't that important.
I found a lot of emails but I didn't find a lot of emails I cared about enough to update when I did this.
This is a great idea.
I'm using Thunderbird with IMAP to my own email server for my new email, but I can totally see something like that working to make the transition work. Thanks!
That's a smart way of going about it. I threw caution to the wind because I stopped using my Google account for services years ago. We'll see how that affects things in the future.
Gmail might have an autoforward thing
It does, but that still means Google has access to all my accounts related email until I move everything over. I suppose it's a good backstop though, thanks for the tip :-)
Obligatory joke that feels too real:
The fact that it's on YouTube enhances the joke, I feel
I had to install a redirect add-on while I held my breath.
All for-profit prisons already have these features, lol.
I see it as fate. I switched credit cards and wanted to register my new one on Meta but their system would not let me enter a Canadian postal code. My solution is to let the account expire in April (due to non-account payment because the credit card on file no longer exists) and sell my Quest 3s, otherwise they would have had me for another year. My days of troubleshooting or trying to get around bad design are over. Life is too short and VR, while fun, isn't fun enough for me to make the time sacrifices required to keep going. The bloom is off of the VR rose.
I have a quest 3 but I'm not paying meta a dime for anything beyond the headset. It's much cheaper to buy games on Steam if that setup works for you. There are also apps like apprenticeVR that basically let you download and install any APK for games to play then directly on the headset.
Recently apprenticeVR gave me some issues reaching the servers, but it looks like there are some forks made recently to provide a fix until the main project incorporates something:
https://github.com/jimzrt/apprenticeVr/issues/47
If it was deleted then how could you recover it
It gets deleted after some time. There is some time to recover it before it will be deleted actually.
So they're lying
have been deleted
recover
🙄
At least write "is scheduled to be deleted" to make the lie not as obvious.
I assume that the account is not usable after this. So it is a logical delete and the physical delete is scheduled. I don't know what would be a better way to phrase it, that would not confuse the users.
I am not trying to defend google, I just had similar UX issues at work.
Correct. Google is banking on users getting withdrawl and crawling back. They all do the same thing, like Meta products. They give you 30 days before deletion because they know most people are addicted and will recover their accounts.
It's like how most people call moving a file into the trash can "deleting." It is deleted (in a sense), but you can still recover it if you want before the trash can gets emptied.
Or like how even you can actually delet a file from the disk but still be able to recover it before the disk space is overwritten by other files. I'm not saying that this is what Google does when you recover a freshly deleted account (most likely not), but what I'm trying to say with these two examples is that being able to be recovered is not a contradiction with having been deleted
Also I don't get why you take problem with this. It's not like it's another loop to jump through to get to delete the account?
Could still be actually deleted, but there's backups. Technically true.
If you can recover my Data then my Data is NOT deleted.
Just a copy of it, yes.
I mean technically deletion just means to allow the computer to overwrite the data but until this happens it can be recovered.
My children's schools and after-school extracurricular clubs (including ones offered by the local police department) still are held hostage by Alphabet, forcing me to also maintain an account with them. But... I don't need to use it for anything else.
Congratulations. I have mine still active for 2 years for email forwarding...I think I should have caught all residual services by now and switched the email adress for them. Photos are transferred to selfhosted Immich, Files on nextcloud and Filen. Maybe I should find some time for the final deletion then?
What are the gmail replacement options?
I use mailbox.org, and it's been good. I used tutanota for a while, but the fact that I couldn't use any email clients (they have their own now I've heard) made me switch. It's also why I didn't go with Proton, since you have to pay the $10/mo plan (I think) to do it with them.
I use proton and it’s been solid
Any small-to-medium paid email hoster. Because if not paid, you are the product. And large ones usually want both, your money and your data/advertising.
Proton and Privateemail through Namecheap.
'removed from public access, but retained for our own or for legal purposes'
That's something to do while we still can, Instagram doesn't let me delete my own account :/ Tried reaching the support multiple times, I've been completely ignored
i used an instagram scraper tool with an account, at some point they suspended the account and required my ID. I obviously refused and just let it rot, at some point they deleted my account.
After how much time? I was banned because of using third party client, I did the kyc process at the time because I wanted to delete the account but still I could not access...
It's been years for me and they didn't delete it yet.
I used instaloader to scrape about 5 profiles (my friends, ofc i have their permission) every day (was it called story? the 24h expiring thing). occasionally the token(?) saved in instaloader would expire and display their warning saying there was "Suspicious activity" or something, so i setup a simple script to run firefox to login and extract cookies from it every time. Had that running for some weeks and it was permabanned
You might get better results by going outside their channels and using legal options. Like not through the courts, but I think some jurisdictions have a law that you data must be deleted if a request is sent in writing or something like that. You might also be able to request they send you all the data they have (though this might cost money because they print it and mail it). I remember someone did that with their Tinder data for some article about how shitty Tinder is, though it depends on where you live.
Your data has been "deleted".
So what are you going to use?
I was using Nextcloud with OnlyOffice for a while, but since then, this is the setup:
- YouTube --> Invidious/Odysee/PeerTube
- Authenticator --> Stratum
- Google Passwords --> Vaultwarden
- Gmail/Calendar/Tasks --> Privateemail (through domain host)
- Google Drive --> Syncthing/SFTPGo (webdav implementation handles phone backups, too)
- Play Store --> Aurora and F-Droid
- Google Search --> SearXNG
- Google Home --> HomeAssistant
- Google Photos --> Immich
- Google Books --> Kavita
- Android Messages --> KDE Connect
- Google Maps --> Organic Maps or Magic Earth
- Google Meet --> Element
- Google Pay --> PayPal
- Google Voice --> Session
- YouTube Music --> gonic
Thank you friend.
That takes me back. Been several years for me. Congratulations
Thanks, and nice going!
Congratulations!!!
I’m getting closer and closer to this goal myself.
Good luck! I just decided to rip the bandage off instead of going through my accounts. I've been self-hosting for several years now, and I have replacements for all Google apps. The only thing I'd been using it for was YouTube, but that site is definitely compromising for people with certain political opinions.
I would never dare to do that, sadly. My job keeps me from attempting such a risky maneuver.
Have you considered slowly transitioning to another account/service?
I’ve been going through my google account for almost a year now, taking my time to really deal with all that stuff so I can close it for good.
I have Kubuntu on a VM. I feel like I need to buy another device right now, just to pull it off. It takes me basically all day to do one hour of work, because idk why...I'm totally fucked. So I'm afraid of messing up the transition.
I'm already used to the sudo, apt, and npm package nonsense that everyone has to deal with.
I already accepted that it will always be broken, there will always be more workarounds, and one type might fuck up my entire OS (happened already).
EDIT: I did delete Paypal.
I hear ya, getting into it can be messy. And having a VM on the side is a good choice.
My current idea of a solid setup to manage long term:
*A main machine that has a bare-bones, lightweight Distro on it. Just the stuff you need to work + a VM program to run:
VM1: a copy of your main OS, test stuff out here first if you think it’s risky.
VM2: big tech corp spy software IF you need it. (Keep that sucker offline)
(And make backups/snapshots of your installation every once in a while).
If you have it: second machine: this one is for degoogling ect, save your social media stuff here before you take it out back.
If you have it: 3rd machine to run as a personal server (working on that myself)
This can all be old gear. In the process of getting to know Linux better and better (which is an ongoing process for all of us) you’ll get more and more fluent.
You got this! Don’t give up!
I don’t know how it works for Google but the moment they invoiced you once they might be able to or more precisely they might have to nevertheless keep yr data for years for tax reasons… And then some because they might have to comply with obscure data retention laws or such. But as of the moment this deletion happens you might not be able to access it anymore indeed.
Congratulations. Starting this year i got rid of facebook account but not completely because messenger is probably most popular messaging app in my country for some reason but still it is a great feeling
I've done the same. Removing messenger is impossible in Poland
That’s gotta be infuriating.
I'd suggest to recover your account and burn it first: Register in a hell amount of random services for a few weeks to make it confuse about you, so their data about you will be imprecise which has no much value for them.
BUT... don't be too obvious, make it look like a legit behavior. We must assume they can spot a timestamp when you started burning it.
I say that because I did the same, straight deleted my Google account, but I wish I realized it'd be better to burn it first.
Anyway, not a mandatory thing, your data will become useless eventually, up to date data is more valuable for them than outdated data. They probably just ignore/delete old deleted accounts indeed, since it has each time less updated info.
old google accounts that have been regularly used for their entire existence are whitelisted by youtube's age assurance, because if the google account is beyond like...10 years old and has been getting continuous use the entire time then there's no way it belongs to a kid anymore
that's why I kind of regret deleting my older Gmail addresses, the one I use to watch youtube is still pretty old over 15 years. but I had one google account that would be 19 years old by now
I had one google account that would be 19 years old by now
mine is that old and i rue the day i became so dependent on it; so i suppose it's a good thing that i can't tell exactly when that happened. lol
so compartmentalize it for just watching youtube. make a new profile on your privacy-friendly web browser just for that, load that profile up with all the annoyance blocking things you need and leave the main daily-driver profile free from google.
and don't use any of google's services on mobile if you can
i've already done the browser stuff you recommended leveraging container tabs on firefox.
but it doesn't seem matter: i recently discovered a facebook account that i forgotten i had created 15ish years ago tied to a secondary gmail account that i don't use anywhere besides firefox in private mode a dozen or so times per year at the most on a vpn. while using that facebook account, i got an event reminder for a party that i bought a ticket to a few weeks back using my somewhat recently created proton email address along with an almost equally recent debit card & bank account that i opened a few months ago.
it makes me think that server side tracking is now more effective than anything you can do at your end.
You got container tabs to consistently work? Every time I use them they get reset to the default 4. Right now I'm using brave with multiple profiles. I block all of youtube's ads out of spite now
Wait, what is the age assurance thing? I thought just logging in was enough to make all age gates disappear, I didn't realize there was anything special about my account (other than it being tied to my personal email instead of a Gmail address).
a few months ago, youtube implemented AI-based age assurance where to prove you're an adult if the AI thought you were underage, you could either
- dox yourself by uploading an ID that they absolutely WILL keep on file forever and will inevitably leak when they get hacked in the future
- add a credit card to your account so they can trick you into paying for youtube premium when you accidentally click on something in the future or 3. if your account is old enough and has gotten continuous consistent use then they'll just go with that
The media is evil and didn't give the story any attention
What the fuck, how is this the first time I'm hearing about this... I was thinking of deleting my account (with no phone or ID tied to it), I guess I'm keeping it for now.
What the fuck, how is this the first time I’m hearing about this…
Because the media is evil and none of that bullshit is about protecting kids, they just want us to dox ourselves so we're afraid to criticize anything
Nina Simone now stuck in my head, which is good, as is your achievement. I struggled for years to rid myself of their evil grip.
