It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy and use directly without worrying about telemetry or advertising.
The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.
- PC: Anything Linux
- Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76, MNT, Purism Laptops, Starlabs Laptops, TUXEDO Computers, NovaCustom, Slimbook, Pinebook by PINE64
- Smartphone: Jolla Phone, Purism, NovaCustom Smartphones, Fairphone with /e/OS, PinePhone by PINE64
- Brax Phone and its Criticism
- Google Pixel + GrapheneOS might be a better option
- Fairphone OS collects information such as the IMEI, serial number, OS version, device model/brand, operator information, and network/cell information…
- Tablets: StarLite by Starlabs, PineTab by PINE64
- Smartwatch: Pinetime, Bangle.js, ZSWatch, Pebble
- GadgerBridge is a free and open source Android application that allows you to pair and manage various gadgets such as smart watches, bands, headphones, and more without the need for the vendor application.
- HealthyPi Move is not available yet
- Wireless headphones: Fairbuds, PineBuds by PINE64
- Alternatives: IEMs (wired in-ear monitors) + wireless dongle
- Kiwi Ears Cadenza, Truthear Gate/Hexa/Pure, Moondrop Chu 2, Fiio BTR11, Snowsky Retro Nano…
- Alternatives: IEMs (wired in-ear monitors) + wireless dongle
- Wireless Speakers: ?
- E-ink devices: PineNote by PINE64
- Open Book Touch is not available yet
- https://www.crowdsupply.com/e-paper
- Alternatives: CrossPoint Reader Devices require a manual CrossPoint install after purchase.
- TVs: All modern TVs upload your screen, sound out the speaker, information about other device in the same WiFi, conversation collected with built-in microphones and video recordings with built-in camera 24/7.
- Projectors: Same as TV
- Game Console: Anything Linux
- MiSTer FPGA is an open-source FPGA-based retro gaming platform, not a single commercial console. There’s no official finished console to buy.
- VR:
- Steam Frame has telemetry but there is no better option
- Routers: OPNsense
- Alternatives: GL.iNET collects minimal telemetry, and you can install OpenWrt on it.
- MikroTik routers does seem to collect telemetry
- SmartHome: PineVoice and PineCam by PINE64
- Alternatives: Home Assistant + Zigbee / Z-Wave Devices Without WiFi
- Security cameras: ?
- Reolink cameras collects telemetry but can be used locally.
- Printers: All modern printers put invisible tracking codes in printed pages, which can identify the exact printer and date and time of printing.
- Openprinter is not available yet.
- 3D printers: Prusa 3D Printer, Sovol
- Cars: All modern car uploads location, speed, information on every device you have connected to your car, your contacts, in-car conversations with built-in microphones and video recordings with built-in camera 24/7
- It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy by Mozilla
- Slate is not available yet
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
Other suggestions:
I currently still use my iPad as my daily driver, do not have the money to replace it yet. I do have a handful of pi’s, and a old (2014) Mac mini with Debian installed, doing things on my LAN that my iPad cannot. Snapdragon and other ARM or RISC-V CPU’s are not Intel/AMD or x86.
I am waiting a little while until I can get a Motorola phone that I can install Graphen OS on.
Just don’t. Get wired ones.
Turn off all the “smart” features you may have to search around to find instructions to turn off the negging for an internet connection but get something like a pi 5 or a media centre PC (with Linux) to replace the smart features. Than you decide how your media is stored and hosted on your LAN.
Do not connect them to the internet, full stop. I find it iffy to even let them host their own wifi as well, mine is attached to a pi running CUPS.
I swear by pihole, while others in the ad-blocker/tracker community swear by adguard I tried it but came back to pihole. You will find debates for or against either one, probably the first one you choose will be the one you like because you will mod it and add the ad lists/blacklists that work best for you. I have 2 piholes on two pi 5s (they run on other pis as well, I have had pihole running on a pi 0 2 before), one as the primary DNS and one as the secondary DNS. I think only the primary is also running unbound along side of it but I don’t remember if the second one is.
Self host as much as you can when I started down the journey of self hosting I thought it would last 3 months at most; I had been watching youtube videos for a few years so I thought I knew everything I wanted to do, I had been running pihole and homebridge for years already so I thought I would be ready for this journey oh how wrong was I, I thought nextcloud would be fine for everything I needed turns out no I think I found pictures was the first issue I had with it so I found immich, than calendars so I found an app for that than contacts, and so on and so forth nextcloud tries to do to many things so it does nothing well, I am still looking for something that does files better than samba as I would like either a gui or webui. I have a VPN from my GL.iNET firewall (running vanilla-ish OpenWRT, it is a clean install but I have installed things and modded it to my needs and likings) so I can access all my stuff from outside of my LAN. I wanna say my firewall forces all DNS stuff through port 53 even if it is hard coded to go elsewhere on my IoT vLAN (10.66.6.x), which than goes to my pihole set up.
I have my own domain that has a wildcard email setup so everything gets it’s own email; when I mapped out my 3 month self hosting journey I had email setup set for a week long project for after I got my 2 static IP’s, I found out that was not a realistic plan. My old host, who I would not suggest (hosthero), did not offer a wild card option fot email so I had to go create a new address each time I wanted to signup for a free trial, as many times as I wanted to, but now with my new host, who I would suggest (easydns), offers a wild card option so I can come up with one on the spot. I was furniture shopping recently and I was asked for an email, I quickly had a thought and gave them their store name my domain.