Thanks for the response!

Thanks for the response!

Such a thing exists in Amsterdam as well. From what I’ve read, it helps against poisoning etc quite a lot.

Does that sound legit? 😮
(I currently live in Europe, considering to move to AU. I’d rather have a realistic overview, with ups and downs presented fairly, so I’m curious.)

I’m personally new to reddit. Do you have any recommendations on what to do with posts that you think waste your time or provide disinformation? Unsubscribe from the author? (But that would not be scalable if communities and new people join.) Unsubscribe from groups [that don’t have moderation policies you align with]? But then I’d be pushing towards gated communities or something like that…

Any recommendations?

It’s notable that the article focuses heavily on the eco impact. However, that’s only half of the story. The other half is how enjoyable cities can be when public transport complements cars and bicycles. Being on the street becomes actually nice. Your kids can bike to school themselves and not die on the first intersection. That sort of stuff. It’s absolutely amazing to live in countries/cities that mastered this

Good to know! I was really eyeing Triodos back in the day, due to what looked like a good ethical stance, but it didn’t work out at the time. Nice that they’ve fixed it! (I’ve updated my message above as well to include the bank.)

With respect to 2FA, if you want to be more ready for any future next time, you could migrate to an open-source TOTP app. E.g. andOTP. I use this one, it’s fine. The underlying standards don’t change in decades, so you can choose any compatible client and be without trouble for years and years. And it may be good to do in any case, googlified phone or not. Good apps also tend to provide password-protected backups.

I have no knowledge about RCS though, never used it so can’t tell. Otherwise GrapheneOS user for ~2 years, before that LineageOS, before that CopperheadOS for another few years.

You can use andOTP if you want a FOSS app on Android. If you’re a hardcore no-Android-at-all user (or considering), you can use KeePassXC on the desktop. This kind of defeats the purpose of 2FA, but on the other hand people with KeePassXC tend to have strong passwords due to ease of their maintenance, so you don’t need 2FA as much to begin with.

TL&DR; use andOTP on Android or KeePassXC on Linux Desktop.

(And noteworthy that ING has a million of different apps)

I’ve re-tried ING now, the app starts fine and the first steps to create an account are fine (I went up to the phone number and email). However, IIRC they used to break on further steps such as ABN AMRO breaking when wanting to scan my ID card for verification. But then again, you may not need it if you already passed that verification. Anyway, just letting you know if you’re curios; I’m aborting here.

That’s not a full solution really… unless you believe that the bluetooth software on the lamp has zero vulnerabilities that would ever be found and mass-exploited.

Dutch banks working without google are: BUNQ and ASN Bank (EDIT: and Triodos).

BUNQ has the built-in QR scanning functionality broken (the one for iDEAL, if you’re living in NL you know), but that’s acceptable because it works to scan the QR in Binary Eye, which in turn opens the bunq app and the payment can be made easily.

ASN just works, all features that I’ve tried I think. (This one is only in Dutch though.)

Banks that I’ve tried few years ago and they didn’t work: ING, ABN AMRO, Rabonbank, Tridos, possibly few others that I forgot.

Also, lately I’ve started using some of those “international” ones, not so focused on NL. I’ve found that Wise (pure web, haven’t even tried their app) and Revolut (app) seem to work well on my de-googlified phone. Hope that helps!

EDIT: re-worded the first line of my message to be indexable by search engines, because that may be useful for future readers.

I’m not sure what the point of the post is? Is it to share frustration? Searching for a solution? Sorry, I may be not good at inferring this, but I don’t get it.

IF you are in solution-finding mode, then there are a few things that you can do.

1. You can use those banks that work without google. I’ve found 2 in the Netherlands, for example. One of them stopped working a while ago, I’ve wrote about that to their support and had to discontinue, withdrawing all my funds using a Dutch procedure for full withdrawal from a bank. After half a year or so I’ve noticed they’ve fixed it and work without google again. I’ve returned as well (it’s convenient for me to have 2 banks). I’m sure as hell banks watch for their usage statistics and wouldn’t like seeing people leave their bank if it can be fixed with a simple reversal of whatever the dev team did lately.
2. You could try Linux phones such as PinePhone to see which use cases can it already cover. 30%? 70%? 90%? You’ll know what to even wait for in the Linux landscape to be able to switch. You’ll get a bit of power or mental control if you acquire this knowledge.
3. Funnily, you can expect some good news coming from all those fights between US and China, because that makes a LOT of devices ship without google services. And some people in your county (I assume it’s not China, otherwise you wouldn’t have these problems) may have phones bought there, so you won’t be alone when pushing for such changes.