How I'm reducing the info google has on me.

With all the news of PRISM and Googles involvement, I've decided to reduce the amount of information Google gets on me.

For those of you who don't know exactly how much Google actually tracks, here is a quick list:

(List assumes a smartphone is also used)

• Search history
• Social Media sites used
• Videos watched/Uploaded to youtube
• Android devices owned (includes IMEI, register dates etc..)
• Blogs (yes even this one)
• Contacts
• Emails
• Play Store purchases
• And the list goes on

Needless to say, the list is substantial and if you are like me, that is quite a bit of information to just hand over to any one company especially knowing where they send it.

Now since I, just like many other people have learned to become very dependent on the internet giant that is Google, I need ways to be able to continue to use their services while minimizing the amount of data they get.

This is not easy of course but with some tweaking it's possible to reduce it at least a bit.

First thing I did was to make the switch over from Chrome to Chromium.

Chromium is the Open Source origin of Chrome, so all your addons and account data will still be usable without any problem.

Because Chromium is Open Source, anyone can look at the code that makes up the browser, making it much harder to hide tracking services and backdoors in the browser without anyone knowing about it.

This step reduces the information the information Google tracks at least a little bit.

Second step I did was moving away from using google.com for my searches.

Since Google is still the worlds leading search engine tho, I can't afford to not use the service at all so I use a site like Startpage or Duckduckgo. These are sites that search google for you, cutting out any log for them that YOU did the searching. Extra added goodness is that both sites work purely over HTTPS meaning that any sniffing of what data you are sending to google is also (nearly) impossible.

As an added step to make life easier for my self, I also changed the behavior of Chromium's main address and search bar (Omnibox) to automatically use startpage.com.

A third step that I don't use that much but I have put in place is that I no longer send personal correspondence in plain text. I use a software like GPG4Win or similar to encrypt my data using a public/private key system. ( Check the about section of my website for my public key )

While this only works with people who actually know how to use it, my personal correspondence is so few that it isn't a huge problem. If I could get companies to use my key for encrypting my mails I would be a happy paranoid man.

While none of the above guarantee a data-less Google, they help at least reduce SOME of the stuff they get on a daily basis. The fight against systems like PRISM is something we must all pick up, in whatever way we can. That is why I decided to make this post and I hope that anyone at all finds it useful.