We all use a few basic apps during the day, so I researched what can we use instead the well known applications that usually track our activity. I found a few privacy oriented alternatives for mail, blogging, search engine, browsers and social networks.
Unfortunately there is little to no alternatives for the most popular applications out there, being mainly the social media platforms. The ones offered rarely catch my attention.
But, if you are really hot about your social networking, and you do not wish to change that, you wish to keep your Twitter, your favorite video app or what-not, you can still improve your privacy within some other activities.
EMAILS
Some would say that Tutanota, Disroot or Protonmail are good solution, but personally I like the https://www.criptext.com the best, because they could possibly be the most private email provider. There are a few other private self-hosted solutions, but if you are not tech endowed, it would be too much to ask.
NOTES
Usually writers and blogger use a few writing/note taking apps at the time, depending on how many backups they wish to keep or what their writing habits are like. You can use Evernote, Google Keep or Drive, but while they are probably very safe if used with authentication - hardly will anyone be able to steal your account - they are not private or immune on tracking. Instead, you can use Joplin, Turtl or Standard Notes.
I tried later two, in Turtl ( even being that ugly) you can add multiple folders, images and files, while Standard Notes offers only notes and shareable notes.
OTHER PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
https://cryptpad.fr and https://etherpad.org offer collaborative writing and editing, which is a great solution for the groups.
For other things you might take a look at:
https://crypt.ee - storing files
https://ethercalc.net - shareable spreadsheet, available on few platforms
https://disroot.org/en - has a pretty much the whole collection of tools
Office suits - https://www.libreoffice.org/ and https://www.wps.com
THE WHOLE OPERATING SYSTEM...
If you care to substitute your bloated Windows for something more private and lightweight, you can try Linux distros, Tails and Qubes OS. There are a few privacy oriented mobile alternatives, but they are usually pain in a neck to install or crudely limited to only a few smartphone brands.
VIDEO HOSTING
Vloggers might take a look at LBRY as an alternative to popular YouTube, and in case you are a photographer a self-hosted Piwigo is a great substitute to Google Photo.
HOSTING AND SELF-HOSTING
In case you wish to host your blog anywhere, privacy-wise hosting providers are kind of rare. You can choose from a few such as the Orange Website. On the other hand you can try the Beaker Browser, p2p decentralized browser which uses dat and ipfs. It is still experimental, but very much fun to use.
BLOGGING
If you only want to blog, https://write.as is a cross-platform that might be a good solution.
If you are looking for a more lucrative solution, join Read.Cash and start blogging.
DELETE "EVERYTHING"... DELETE "FOREVER"
If you really want to delete yourself from the face of the internet (mission impossible), you can use this website in attempt to do so: https://justdeleteme.xyz. Ironic or not, they also have the Google Chrome Extension. If you try to avoid Google these days, you can test the same extensions for them by using Dissenter, Brave, Chromium or Bromite.
BROWSERS
Bromite, Opera, Tor and maybe if you want to try the Snowhaze and OnionBrowser for iOS are all good options for a default browser. Opera is probably the least known browser which can easily protect you from malignant tracking extensions for example.
The security over the iPhone is fairly better in comparison with the one on Android devices, because not only devices are very much different but the App Shop and Play shop have a completely different regulations for the apps.
If you want to see how secure your browser is at this point, you can test it over https://ipleak.net/.
SEARCH ENGINES
The thing we all use by default is a search engine, whether you are in mobile or desktop. The list of the ones that will respect your privacy is kind of scarce:
https://searx.me and https://duckduckgo.com, or P2P
Not really great choice, I would opt for Tor browser and Searx.
BLAB APPS
In addition, the chat apps are a complete nightmare. Even if many in later years implemented encryption. Signal, Telegram, Discord and Keybase are all very cool and inviting chat apps, they are still centralized and can be subject to any unwanted change at any given moment.
Federated and P2P messengers are far better, but they also have a slew of their own problems. Briar ( Android) and Matrix can be very interesting to try, and Wickr for its end to end military level encryption. StatusIM in addition to encryption is also a serverless wallet for crypto, ERC20 and some ERC721 tokens. You can also see into RetroshareCC.
SECURE NETWORKS
Secure self-contained networks such as Tor, I2P ( and I2P-Bote mail), Freenet and Retroshare are all the secure environments which you should investigate in case you want to learn more about privacy and security online.
... AND FINALLY ... THE PLAGUE
Other thing we all like to use on daily basis are the social networks. They are the huge time wasters and if not used smart can become a burden.
In social networks such as Twitter users can be banned, suspended or outright deleted for almost anything. Decentralized apps in that case are the BEST BUY!
IN case of the bust you can always try Memo.Cash and MemberApp.
If you just must have that one extra app, regardless of the reason (news, family, local events, friends, hobby, volunteer work) but you want it all private and well cushioned, I guess there will be a few disappointments along the way.
Aside of the Mastodon (zero-censorship Gab included), Mewe, Friendica, Movim and Pleroma there not much to name. It is disappointing because they are not attractive or inviting to be absolutely frank. Whatever looks like the privacy fiasco once known as the Facebook is definitely alluding on boredom and self-loathing. This includes Mewe and Friendica, maybe somebody will find them attractive, but I am not personally interested. Mastodon, Movim and Pleroma with multiple instances each are definitely more inviting.
Usually the instances have a few users, far little to be relevant in comparison to other bigger social networks. Number of the users could be a reason why majority of the people flock to these big social networks.
If you are into Instagram you can try VeroCO, or maybe creative hub, the ElloCO.
