I'm sure the scope of 'escape route' would inform the choice of alternatives. In my case I work at a big tech company and I do not have qualms about using services from some of these firms to the extent they provide convenience, network effects, sensible security and just the basic convenience that I am happy to go along with them where I find a reasonable exchange of value. Best examples of these are WhatsApp, Facebook Marketplace, LinkedIn,. and all the Google services.
My number 1 priority is to have all my important data - mail, music, photos, other files, contacts, accessible to me on media I control and with multiple copies available for redundancy. I am not quite where I want to be, but the following is where it's at: - Password manager: KeePass database shared with my wife over a Shared Google Drive; vault passwords are committed to memory and exercised every day - Google Drive: Contents are mirrored to my primary laptop, which then gets periodically backed up to a Synology NAS at home - Photos: all photos from phones directly backup to NAS in addition to Google Photos; For my "serious" camera I use Lightroom to process directly on machine and push to Synology and Google Photos; Occasionally use Takeout just for kicks - Music: all my old MP3 music is on my Synology; YTM for streaming works but I have not built any state that I fear losing - WhatsApp: data backed up to Google Drive -> local hard disk -> Primary synology at home - Twitter: when I stopped using Twitter I took their version of Takeout (which worked surprisingly well) -> Primary synology at home - The primary Synology is entirely replicated and backed up to a second Synology at a friend's house within driving distance - The primary Synology is also encrypted and backed up in its entirety to my Google Drive as an additional backup - The whole backup system is documented and available as a hard copy as an attachment to our living will The biggest gap in this plan is *Gmail *itself. The handle itself is the identity and moving that is quite the hurdle. I am too lazy and contended to attempt that. Also using Takeout is a PITA, so my local copies are always significantly behind my Gmail inbox. I'm sure there are solutions to fix this once and for all; that's part of my next 3 year plan. -Karra On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 3:38 AM Udhay Shankar N via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > What are the ways in which silklisters keep an escape route from Big Tech? > > I mean we all use (whether we like it or not) products and services from > Google, Meta, Microsoft...(and, in 2025, OpenAI, Anthropic, et al). > > I am curious about how (and if) people here keep an escape route or two > open in case things go bad and you can't access your account(s) anymore. > > Speaking for myself, the service that hosts this list is itself one such > attempt. I chose to not use a free offering from google and pay for one > instead. Similarly, I have all of my email, contacts and calendars echoed > to a paid service. Ditto with cloud storage. > > You? > > Udhay > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > > -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist >
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
