https://blog.ramiyer.me/tags/open-source/Recent content in Open Source on Ram’s blogHugoen-INWed, 09 Jun 2021 10:13:05 +0530https://blog.ramiyer.me/how-to-pick-privacy-friendly-services/Sat, 22 May 2021 20:26:34 +0530https://blog.ramiyer.me/how-to-pick-privacy-friendly-services/<p>The topic of privacy came up today in a conversation about picking a cloud storage for documents like journals and other writing. Given the fact that services can recognise handwriting, where is a good place to store your notes?</p> <p>The larger question was, how do you pick privacy-friendly services?</p> <nav id="TableOfContents"> <ul> <li><a href="#encryption">Encryption</a></li> <li><a href="#core-business">Core business</a></li> <li><a href="#open-source-software">Open source software</a> <ul> <li><a href="#not-truly-open-source">Not truly open source</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#free-products-and-services">Free products and services</a></li> <li><a href="#on-device-and-peer-to-peer-alternatives">On-device and peer-to-peer alternatives</a></li> <li><a href="#privacy-friendly-alternatives">Privacy-friendly alternatives</a> <ul> <li><a href="#linux">Linux</a></li> <li><a href="#protonmail">ProtonMail</a></li> <li><a href="#signal">Signal</a></li> <li><a href="#firefox">Firefox</a></li> <li><a href="#cryptee">Cryptee</a></li> <li><a href="#duckduckgo">DuckDuckGo</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#in-closing">In closing</a></li> </ul> </nav> <p>Let us start simple: Google owns Google Drive, Microsoft owns Microsoft OneDrive. They are both into advertising, though Microsoft is not as aggressive as Google is. Dropbox is solely a cloud storage company, with no known ties with the advertising world. Dropbox scores better here. Despite Dropbox&rsquo;s security issues,<label for="sn-dropbox-pw" class="margin-toggle sidenote-number"></label> <input type="checkbox" id="sn-dropbox-pw" class="margin-toggle" /> <span class="sidenote"> Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional For Four Hours (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-passwords-optional-for-four-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">TechCrunch</a>) </span> I have found it reliable. The drawback is that you start with a meagre 2 GB of storage. Sure, if you plan to store text documents and not much more, 2 GB is not bad; if you plan to store scanned documents, pictures, etc., you must look elsewhere.</p>https://blog.ramiyer.me/privacy-and-you/Sat, 09 Jan 2021 08:40:53 +0530https://blog.ramiyer.me/privacy-and-you/<p>Online privacy is like civilisation. It takes time, but when it happens, it happens. The process is slow and arduous. While we do not push ourselves to such drastic changes, some events do push us. One such was that of Facebook deciding to force WhatsApp users to allow sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook.</p>