how to make sure my google drive is private

Simple process.Īt this point, with significantly less than one hour spent getting things installed and configured, I had a dedicated, private installation of OwnCloud on my server and file syncing applications installed on my two main computers.īeyond handling my file sync/backup functionality, the myriad of web apps available for OwnCloud extend the functionality in pretty exceptional ways – which allowed me to use the 'Documents' app to completely replace my dependence on Google Docs. I then proceeded to install the OwnCloud desktop client for Linux (Windows and Mac clients are there, as well, for those who haven't yet switched over to Linux). Packages are hosted over on the openSUSE Build Service, and installation was literally a simple 'zypper install owncloud' (or 'apt-get install owncloud' for your Debian/Ubuntu systems). See also: A Linux user tries out Windows 10Ībout 30 minutes after deciding I would try to use OwnCloud, I had set up my own virtual private server (I opted to use NQHost for this server, but any host that'll give you a complete Linux system will do the job nicely) and had installed the latest version of OwnCloud on it.

This, combined with the fact that I know some of the people behind OwnCloud – and to say they are good, freedom-loving, Open Source and privacy preaching people would be an accurate description – gave me a pretty high level of confidence that this was the solution I was looking for. Think of OwnCloud like an Open Source version of Dropbox – one that you can install on your own server and which has a boat load of web apps for doing everything from editing documents to managing calendars and browsing photo galleries. But I didn't want to simply trade reliance on Google with reliance on Dropbox without getting any improvements in functionality, flexibility, and privacy in the process. I could have simply moved those files over to Dropbox and declared the entire process complete this would have, certainly, satisfied the core goal of my 'No Google' challenge.

Replacing Google Drive with a non-Google file backup service is a simple thing.

How to make sure my google drive is private