It's the privacy vs convenience problem. For most people, the convenience is so much more important so when you can just use Google to sign in everywhere, you get rid of your passwords remembering issue (oh my god how many people have blamed me for losing their passwords, I'm an IT guy).

Companies want to maximise profits by 'knowing' (ie tracking) their customers so they can tailor their products or services to actual usage. A noble goal? They just want to be more convenient for us.

In the end I guess having an account anywhere and the companies seeing anonimised or aggregated, no personally identifiable records, should not be an issue. But they don't need to keep track of where I live, what my e-mail adress or phone number is and especially need not now any third party stuff.

It has become a very untrustworthy business just because the companies could do whatever they wanted and now that there is more scrutiny, they just find back alley ways to screw us over.

Kudos, it's indeed a long road but a bright one!

Regarding what's left :

• I still use Steam, and even have a SteamDeck (running only Linux) but if you want to avoid that itch.io is probably a good option, namely no launcher, only what game developers provide
• Discord, well you could use the Web page, that's what I do and even calls work. If you want to remove it entirely you will obviously lose your contacts so trickier problem
• banking, same principle, you can do most of it via the Web. Some convenient options won't work, e.g QR code to login or pay, but overall your bank probably have solutions that don't require anything but a Web browser and your physical cards, do ask them and if it's not up to your standards, check for other banks that might have better terms than the big ones

You don't have to immediately drop the few left but IMHO it's not about being a purist or completionist but rather a journey and you already did a lot!

Just chiming in to say your english is great! Ty for the writeup

I think one of the most important things people should consider when discussing or deciding to improve your privacy is to first define your threat model. In other words, what is it you want to protect exactly? What are you worried about? Because there are some things that just can't be done realistically, or things one person might take as a requirement that really doesn't matter to the next person, sometimes for surprising reasons.

For example if you're worried about three letter agencies doing something, well, sorry to say but you're probably screwed if you're reading this.

If you want to be able to browse online 100% anonymously, that's also extremely difficult (and some say impossible, cough creepjs) even for the smartest people.

If you're worried about companies and advertisers selling your data, I think there's a lot more you can do to mitigate this than the above things. But some will still argue even going outside at all, having a job, or spending money on things can be a big threat to that too.

Basically decide on what things you actually care about, and start there vs just reading randomdude.com's "subjective guide to privacy 101".

I think there alot of lurkers in this sub (myself included) who are in the same position you were in 6 months ago. Thank you for showing us the first steps. This might be the kick I needed to start getting serious about privacy.

Not everything proprietary is inherently bad, but you did more than most ever could. It’s those megacorporations & anything “free” you have to worry the most about.

Steam is a weird one since it is proprietary, & you could lose access to your digital game copies but a) most work if you just download them for long-term storage, b) they provide a decent service with deals & synced saves, c) they are privately-held so they don’t need to chase quarterly profits for shareholders, & d) they have done more for Linux gaming than almost anyone else (even if the selfish goal was to break Microsoft’s shackles & later have a hardware device they could sell you that happens to be mutually beneficial for both sides with so many patches).

Deleting everything Microsoft & Google is very difficult. The former I am locked since too much free software thinks it can sleep in the dragon’s den as GitHub. Google, well good luck finding an employer that isn’t using it in my experience & when it comes to using your own email for instance, there’s like a 90% chance the person on the other end is using a Google or Microsoft email account without encryption to get them the whole message anyhow.

that's awesome man, im so proud of you, good work

How can i know if my banking app is inherently bad?