- I love Google, let's get that out of the way first.
I mean, you're watchin' this video
on YouTube for goodness sakes.
But from a security standpoint,
it doesn't make sense to trust one company
with every aspect of your digital life.
I mean, think about this for a minute.
You can use Gmail for email, YouTube for entertainment,
Google Chrome for browsing,
and then Google Maps for navigation,
Google Drive for cloud storage, Google Sheets and Docs for.
Well you get the point.
These are all great products, but for many reasons
including your personal online security,
you might not wanna put all of your digital eggs
in one basket, you know what I mean?
So let's look at some practical ways
that we can reduce our reliance on Google.
Number one, ditch Google Chrome.
I know how fast it is, I know how easy it is to use,
but you don't understand how much of what you're doing
online is being tracked, even if it's only anonymously,
when you use Google Chrome.
What you may not realize is that there
are a number of great alternatives to Chrome,
including Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox,
which is what I use, Brave, which is an open-source option,
or even Tor, which is a more secure
way to browse the internet.
There's no denying the fact that Google uses Chrome
to gather data on how users search and browse the internet.
And if you don't wanna be a part of that,
then the best thing you can do is ditch Chrome
for one of the alternatives.
Number two, if you're not willing to ditch Chrome,
then the least that you can do is stop using
the Google Chrome Password Manager.
I know it's convenient and I know
that it's just as secure as any other option out there,
but the fact remains that browser-based password managers
are vulnerable, because anybody who has access
to your computer automatically
has access to those passwords.
The good news here is that there are great password manager
alternatives that you can use.
I've gone into detail in this video here,
but just know there are some free open source ones
like Bitwarden, and even some great premium ones
like 1Password that I recommend.
Just know this, when you get asked by your browser,
do you want to save this password, just click No.
Number three, try a different email client.
Now I'm not saying get rid of Gmail altogether.
Heck, I have a number of Gmail accounts that I continue
to use, and I use it for my business as well,
but I also have a secure email account
that I use for my banking
or for any extremely sensitive email stuff
that I want to do.
This means that if someone hacks into my Gmail account,
they don't automatically have access into
the sensitive things that I do,
like my banking, my investment,
or even my personal communications
that I wanna keep private.
Again, there are some great alternative options here,
including ProtonMail, which is what I use and recommend,
Tutanota, or even the free options
like Outlook, Yahoo, or iCloud Mail.
You don't have to move all of your email away from Gmail,
but it might not be a bad idea to separate out your most
sensitive email communications and logins
to that secured, separated email account.
Number four, move away from using Google Drive
to store all of your personal documents.
And I know this is hard because of how convenient
they make it if you're already a Gmail
or a Chrome user, to upload and store everything
in the cloud, but there
are some great cloud-based alternatives.
Think of things like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Tresorit,
all of which offer secure, convenient ways
to store your files online.
If you're already wantin' to move to a VP,
then you could use something like IPVanish
that comes with a free SugarSync account
that offers you hundreds
of gigabytes of free online storage.
All I'm saying is that you don't have
to use Google Drive.
There are ways that you can reduce your reliance
on that online storage and use something
that's a free alternative.
Number five, consider searching for things online
using something other than the Google homepage.
Microsoft's Bing search engine
is something that continues
to get better and better every year.
Yahoo is, well, they're still around.
And then you've got something like DuckDuckGo,
which is a very privacy-focused search engine
that doesn't store any of your search history.
The problem here is that Google Search
is hands down, the best option on the market right now.
But if you're using Google Chrome
while signed in to your Gmail account
and using Google Search, you are handing so much data
about what you're doing over to Google
on a silver platter.
Now maybe you really value all of this convenience,
and I get that, but keep in mind that convenience
is the enemy of security.
And finally, my last suggestion is that you move away
from YouTube for all of your entertainment.
I have been informed that I made a grave error
and I need to apologize for what I just said.
YouTube is an excellent resource,
and I highly recommend you continue
to watch as many videos as possible.
All right, all kidding aside, if you've looked around,
you know that there aren't many great alternatives
to YouTube.
Dailymotion, Vimeo, they just don't have
the breadth and quality of content that YouTube does.
What you can do if you're worried
about your privacy is maybe search around
on YouTube when you're not logged in to you Gmail account,
or even in an Incognito Mode on your browser.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ways
to reduce your reliance on Google,
and if you have something that I've missed here,
put it in the comments below,
and go ahead and check the comments
to see what other people have said,
and maybe this community can kinda help each other out here.
If you enjoyed this video, the best thing you
can do right now is like it, and subscribe
to the All Things Secured YouTube channel
where I'm gonna be providing weekly videos
on online security tips.