this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Privacy

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As part of my degoogling, I am looking for an alternative to the google calendar. Not necessarily free. My requirements are:

  • Importable into and editable in standard calendar apps on iPhone and Android.
  • Hosted, no self hosting.
  • Full privacy!

Any recommendations?

Edit:

  • Full privacy as in my data is not used in personalised ads or ML training. End to end encryption is not needed.
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Proton Calendar is a good choice I'd say.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want something hosted with full privacy, yet importable in the standard calendar apps, then I don't think you'll find anything for the time being.

Protonmail and tutanota both provide full privacy and are hosted options, but they require their own apps since they want to ensure reliable E2EE. I suppose you either need to re-evaltuate your requirements or wait for a suiitable product to be launched.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think Posteo works for this as well. Could be wrong

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice suggestion. Didn't knew them, sustainable and privacy focused sounds nice!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Can't buy it with tor, slightly inconvenient.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From their site: All of our payment methods are anonymised using a payment system developed by Posteo. We do not link payment information with email accounts.

Now that is what I call privacy focused 😊

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

NextCloud for the self-hosting server stuff.

DAVx5 for the syncing to Android's native calendars.

Any calendar app that uses the native Android calendars to view them. I'm using DigiCal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

as much as this is a good recommendation (god bless DAVx5), Self-Hosting isn't what OP is looking for.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Doh! I missed that. Apologies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It sounds like EteSync is exactly what you're looking for. A hosted NextCloud instance + DAVx5 is admittedly a bit lacking in the "full privacy" department, and Proton or Tutanota doesn't integate with the standard calendars, but both would also be valid options IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Unless referring to encryption, can you expand on why NC with Dav isn't private? I've got both selfhosted (in home) and haven't picked up on any traffic sharing my calendar to third parties through my logs and alerts, so would like to know more of what you've seen to see if I have a gap in my automated alerts.

Edit: unless your answer was just in response to the OP wanting an already hosted system, then yeah I can understand what you mean there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I was thinking of systems hosted by someone else, not self-hosted.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Maybe buying a single seat enterprise license of Microsoft365 might work for you. Microsoft treats enterprise clients very differently than end users. Only (potential) down side is that you will have to set your own security policies and manage a bunch of things that go beyond a calendar. There is a bonus though. A single enterprise seat license includes 1TB of private-ish enterprise cloud storage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I also do this. Lots of documentation online to get it set up, and obviously you get the benefit of buying and customizing your own domain address

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I tried this and found that at the time there were massive limitations. Admittedly it was a few years ago, but they didn't make it simple to just have a forwarding mail group so that I could have a shared mail address/distribution list to myself and my wife forwarded to our inbox, and you basically had to have a shared email box that was separate to your primary. It didn't pass the spouse test considering this is a basic feature that everyone has so it didn't make it past the trial.

I was actually surprised at how limited the 365 was, I don't remember the other limitations but they seemed fundamental.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, it could very well fullfil my requirements, but preferably a bit more simplistic. Like Proton Calendar, if only it integrated into the iOS ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Idea #2. Why not just use apple’s iCloud with advanced data protection turned on? It’s not perfect from a privacy perspective but at least apples business model isn’t data mining you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Actually, I was looking in the direction of smaller european gpdr focused companies, but this is actually a really good suggestion. I will look into it! Thx!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Calendars, contacts and mail are not end to end encrypted on icloud even with advanced data protection.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sorry for not being clear: I am looking for an alternative calendar hosting, not an alternative to the google calendar app.

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