hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1434.txt

Episode: 1434
Title: HPR1434: Why I made an account free android 
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1434/hpr1434.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 02:16:04

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Hello all.
This is my first episode for HPR.
Been lurking and listening for a while, but if not felt I had something to contribute
till now.
I am Toja.
My real name is James.
Toja is a handle I've used online for quite some time that started as a joke, but sort
of stuck.
There are all sorts of issues concerning privacy right now that have been discussed lately.
There have been many discussions on how to reduce your digital footprint.
We've become so tied into advertisements and free services we often fail to see what
it truly cost ourselves.
These companies are truly offering a fabulous, gilded cage.
It concerns me that we so often give up controls of ourselves and information for things.
I've been concerned about privacy for a while, been trying to figure out how to extricate
myself from the control of others.
When Google was first growing, I was excited to see someone trying to wrestle control of
the computer room from Microsoft.
With its current size and scope, have we just traded one master for another?
No, I'm not saying these companies are evil or anything like that.
They're companies.
They exist to make a profit for their owners.
They offer nice services, but it comes at a price.
Office is more direct and charging you for just about everything.
Google does the same in free services that are ad supported.
Both offer easy ways into their realm.
And just about every other side I go to, wants me to sign up for an account and provide
all sorts of personal information.
Don't get me started on Facebook.
Now you may think I'm a person who wants to unplug, fall into a hole and forget the
world.
Far from it.
I like communications and the interactions that can be done with technology.
In seconds, I can communicate with someone anywhere on the planet.
I can find out what's going on just about any place.
But my question is, who controls all that, or at least the parts that I'm putting into
the system?
Several years ago, I had switched to Linux for my primary iOS.
So I figured I could probably find some solutions that would work.
I was also getting tired of services that I regularly shut down.
I had loved Google Readers, then it got shut down.
Google Talk lost its XMPP support.
Google Voice is changing its services this year, which is going to cut out a lot of the
free calling services.
My Yahoo got a revamp.
It didn't quite like the changes.
And then the constant changes with services that they do continue drives me bonkers.
If you look at Gmail or Yahoo from two years ago, and today, it's entirely different.
Well, last year, I decided to start reducing my dependency on ad-supported services.
I would look at what I did online and then try to find some alternatives, either paid
or self-hosted.
I'm not trying to do anything illegal.
I just want to know who is tracking me and how.
My first obvious choice is to do something with email.
I had more than a dozen different email accounts that I checked regularly.
I dropped most of those.
I had consolidated to two accounts that I had had for quite a long time.
My Gmail, my Yahoo accounts.
Both are heavily ad-supported.
But I had a hosting plan for a personal website that included an email server.
This includes webmail, server connections, and no ads for the stuff that I'm doing.
After all, I'm paying for it.
After setting up forwards for all the emails to the new address, I purely am giving out
my personal one now.
If I don't get too many people screaming at me about this episode, I might detail how
I went ahead and forwarded those.
The next thing I dealt with was my social footprint.
I realized that most, not all the people that I deal with on those social services were
not really adding much to me.
Yes, I sort of liked seeing what they were doing, but all in all, I was spending a lot
of time looking at things that I really didn't need to.
I ended up blocking down my privacy on Facebook, and I checked it once in a blue moon because
there are a few people that's the only way I communicate with them.
Ditto for Google+.
Besides, I prefer face-to-face anyway.
Next I decided that having all my contacts and calendars in the cloud on an advertised
in-server was probably not a good thing.
I saw a season drop box to share files remotely, and there are some limitations with that.
But then along comes own cloud.
After looking at it, after several versions of own cloud and experiments with different
servers, I finally have a stable home solution, accessible from anywhere, due to some scripting
and DNS from my hosting provider.
That sounds like it might become another 8HPR episode.
So now I have male contacts, calendars, and file sharing under my control.
All is good, or so I thought.
I realize my tablet is a major source of tracking.
The device is tied to tons of Google's products.
I have ads from tons of apps that are installed.
Most apps have additional accounts that had to be set up to identify me.
My communications with Google Voice was tracking me, and Gmail was doing the same.
So this time I decided to do something different.
My daughter had gotten a new tablet for Christmas.
She gave me her old one.
Nice thing for her getting an upgrade, right?
It's not bad.
It was an Android 4.0 tablet.
It's got Google plays, and it's tied into tons of stuff.
Immediately I thought of rooting it, but then I had a different idea.
For work related reasons, I cannot root a device and have it access company resources.
Many other people are in the same position.
Could I possibly de-googleify the device without creating an account tied into advertising?
Could I get enough reputable apps to make this a useful device?
Can I document and make the process simple enough that I can give the instructions to
an average person to use?
I came up with some basic criteria.
No accounts created for downloading, installing, or configuring, except for the mail account.
No rooting, no pirated apps, want to say legal on this.
Something that can be easy for an user to do that includes installing and updating the
apps.
I mean, I've seen tons of these solutions, but some of them you have to be pretty advanced
to be able to support them.
For the most part, I think I succeeded on my test.
You can find my attempt at http.com slash slash james.tobusacademy.com forward slash account
underscore free underscore android underscore device dot html.
The link should be in the show notes.
Now I did have one ad supported app to install, but I'm hoping to find an alternative.
So if you have a suggestion, email me.
I would be interested in hearing about your attempts to do the same thing.
My website is james.tobusacademy.com and my email is james.tobusacademy.com.
I would think that many of you are interested in trying to protect your privacy and controlling
your footprint while still being able to reach out in the world.
Let me know what ideas you have and what kind of updates you can suggest to this.
Thanks and have fun.
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