TLDR

I'm improving my privacy by taking back my data through three inter-related projects:

  1. Moving my cloud services and inter-device syncing to a Home Cloud server
  2. Moving my Phone from Google Android to GrapheneOS
  3. Migrating my Laptop from Microsoft Windows to Linux Mint
    I'm calling the overall program "DeGoogle" because that's where it started, an attempt to remove Google's

What I'm trying to achieve

I'm very concerned about identity theft. It's such a prolific issue that even government agencies, such as the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the FTC have sites and guides on how to prevent or cope with the problem. While identity theft is impossible to completely prevent, improving my privacy level will help to mitigate the risk.

“If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.” Zig Ziglar

I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this project, so it'll help if I have an idea exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. I understand that I'll learn things along the way that will alter my strategy, but for now I need to create a target to aim for.

The Privacy Guides Threat Modeling page is a great place to start.

My primary risk-mitigation strategy is to reduce the amount of my personal data that is stored "in the cloud" to whatever extent is workable.

As of this writing (October 2025), my risk mitigation strategy breaks down into four primary goals:

Primary Goals

  1. Where possible, move from proprietary cloud-based systems to self-hosted systems.
  2. When I can't self-host, move from cloud-based vendors that provide "free services" to privacy-friendly services.
  3. Where possible, use FOSS software instead of proprietary.
  4. Change to FOSS operating systems for my various devices (from Windows to Linux Mint for my laptop and from standard Android to GrapheneOS for my phone, a secure and privacy-friendly phone operating system).

Additional Design Criteria

  1. I use both an Android phone and a Windows PC for my various flows and processes. With Microsoft once again requiring Microsoft accounts to use Windows, I'm going to try to move to a Linux laptop. This all means that any system or service I migrate to needs to have multi-platform capabilities, Windows (during the transition), Android and Linux.
  2. My wife and I collaborate using a few services, most notably we share our calendars with each other and Google Keep (which we use to share our shopping list). Replacement services need to be very easy to use without a lot of fiddling, as my wife is not a geek like me and has no patience when things don't "just work".

Purpose for this Page

Basically, I want to provide a starting-point for others who, like me, are just beginning their journey to take back their data and their privacy. I'm hoping to spare them some of the pain and frustration I've felt trying to get all of this to work.

For my ongoing projects, please visit: