Moving More of My Digital Life Somewhere Less Creepy

The problem with the convenience of Google is that convenience usually comes with a tradeoff. Every email, calendar event, attachment, password, and random account confirmation sitting in there is another little piece of my life stored somewhere I don’t really control.

I’ve been trying to clean up some of my digital habits lately. Less random accounts, fewer companies collecting data I don’t need to hand over, and generally just having a better idea of where my information actually lives.

That’s what led me to Proton.

What started as just looking for a better email provider turned into moving a lot more of my everyday stuff over. Proton is less of a single app and more of a collection of tools built around the same idea: your data should belong to you.

I started with Proton Mail, but I’ve ended up using a lot more of the ecosystem. My calendar lives there now, I use Proton Drive for storing files, and I even have a little Bash script running on my personal PC that automatically backs up some things directly into my Drive.

For accounts that I don’t want connected to my main email, I use aliases instead of giving every random website my actual address. It’s a small thing, but it makes it a lot easier to shut down spam or keep track of where my information is going.

I’ve also moved over my passwords to Proton Pass, and for simple documents or spreadsheets I don’t need anything complicated for, Proton Docs and Sheets are good enough to keep everything in the same place.

The nice part is that none of this requires a huge overnight migration. You don’t have to delete your old accounts and start over. You can move things over gradually, which is probably the only realistic way to do it anyway.

I still use plenty of other services. I’m not pretending I completely escaped the modern internet. But having a place where my email, files, passwords, and personal data aren’t being used as part of someone else’s business model feels like a pretty good improvement.

Small changes add up.