Over at Tech Reclaimers we are walking through my Cybercleanse, going one week (instead of day) at a time. You can follow along via Signal, Discord, Mastodon, BlueSky, and Instagram. This weekend we’ll start in on our Data Roadmaps and make a plan for opting out of services one at a time. It’s never too late to start leaving Big Tech!

In other news to share:

• I spoke about my Opt Out exeriments at UC Berkeley a few weeks ago and the talk is now up on YouTube! Please watch and share!

• Mark Hurst compiled a great set of de-Googling tips following our interview last month: check it out!

• Next weekend I’ll give an Opt Out / Tech Reclaimers workshop at Take Back Tech in Atlanta—I hope to see some of you there!

Other Opt Out news from around the web:

• Samsung will stop its texting app and suggests its users move to Google. If you have a Galaxy phone, you may be affected by this change. To avoid Google, many Tech Reclaimers recommend the chat, contacts, and calendar apps from fossify.org, which you can find on F-Droid.

• Google wants to shut down alternative app stores like F-Droid, which circulates free and open source alternatives. Support them here: https://keepandroidopen.org/

• If you have Signal on your phone, make sure to turn off notifications that include names and messages. The FBI recently used this ‘pass’ between Signal and the phone operating system to retrieve otherwise encrypted messages.

• The good folks at CitizenLab have released a study of Webloc, an ad-based geolocation service used to surveil users and provide data to governments.

• The French are at it again — check out this great new mapping app, Cartes, as a Google and Apple maps alternative! Available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, as well as Catalan, Occitan and Breton.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a defender of privacy rights online, left X/Twitter. Check out their departing Director, Cindy Cohn’s book tour this month and next.

More soon! Until then, do you know where your data is?