Objective
Large data-hungry corporations dominate the digital world but with little,
or no respect for your privacy.
We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and that it should be protected.
Migrating to open-source applications and those with a strong emphasis on
privacy & security will help safegaurd you from corporations,
governments, and hackers who log, store or sell your sensetive personal data.
Awesome Privacy is a directory of alternative software which respects your privacy.
Software Requirements
For software to be included in this list, it must meet the following requirements:
- Privacy Respecting
- The project must respect users privacy, not collect more data than necessary, and store info securely
- For hosted services, the project must have a clear privacy policy
- The user must remain in full control of their data, and be able to delete it at any time
- Secure
- The software must be secure by default, without requiring additional configuration
- There should be no current, critical security issues
- The handling of past issues must have been prompt, transparent and effective
- Ideally hosted services should have been security audited, with the report published publicly
- Open Source
- The full source code should be released under an open source license
- Ideally it should be possible for the user to build and run/deploy the software themselves from source
- Actively Maintained
- The developers should address dependency updates and security patches in a timely manner
- Ideally the source should have been updated within the last 12 months
- Transparent
- It should be clear who is behind the project, what their motives are, and what (if any) the funding model is
- For hosted solutions, the privacy policy should clearly state what data is collected, how it's used and how long it's stored
- Ethical
- Must not suppress free speech, discriminate or disregard any human rights
- Relevant
- The software must be relevant, and fit into one of the existing categories
- Functional
- Must be fully functional, and not just a concept or idea
- A stable (non-alpha/beta) release is required at a minimum
- Must be accessible to the general public, and not just a select group of people
- If technical knowledge is required to run it, the software must be well documented
There may be some exceptions, but these would need to be fully justified, reviewed
by the community, and the drawbacks / anti-features must be clearly listed along-side the software.
Usually these entries go within the "Notable Mentions" section instead.
Our Data
All data is stored in
awesome-privacy.yml.
This file is then pulled into the website at build-time, and also used to generate
the repositories README file.
We use this method in the interest of transparency and data integrity,
as Git makes it possible to maintain a full log of what was changed, when, by who and why.
Augmention
The data is augmented with some extra info, to add additional context to each service.
The aim of this is to give you a broader picture of each listing, to help you make a more informed decision.
Currently, this extra data is pulled from:
- Privacy Policy - To fetch a summerized version of each services Privacy Policy
- Including policy and terms of service links, postives + negatives and privacy score
- Via ToS;DR
- GitHub - To fetch info about each project's source code
- Including author & contributors, creation & last updated date, languages, license and star count
- Via the GitHub API
- Android App - To fetch privacy info about each project's Android app
- Including permissions, trackers, privacy score and metdata
- Via Exodus Privacy
- iOS App - To fetch info about each project's iOS app
- Including app size, rating, publish/update date, author and screenshots
- Via Apple App Store
- Docker - To fetch info about each project's Docker image (if it's self-hosted)
- Website - To fetch privacy info about each project's website
- Including SSL chain, WHOIS, server location, blacklist check and a screenshot
- Via Web-Check
- Socials - To fetch info about each project's social media presence
- Including follower count, post frequency, engagement and a screenshot
- Via the Reddit, Discord and Twitter APIs
- User Reviews - User-submitted comments + feedback on a given service
- Implemented using self-hosted instance of Remark42
API
We also have a free, no-auth, CORS-enabled RESR API,
which you can use to access Awesome Privacy's data programmatically,
or to build your own apps on top of it.
The Swagger Spec outlines all endpoints, usage and examples.
Use our public instance, at: https://api.awesome-privacy.xyz or self-host your own
Contributing
Awesome Privacy (including all data and code) is fully open source,
maintained by a core group of volenteers, with a lot of help from the community.
We welcome suggestions, additions, edits and removals to the list.
It's thanks to contributors like you that this project is possible 💜
To get started, head over to our GitHub repository.
From here, you'll be able to edit awesome-privacy.yml
where all data is stored, and then submit your changes as a pull request.
If you're new to open source, you can find some resources to get you started
at git-in.to, but feel free to reach out if you need any help 😊
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to the following sponsors, for their ongoing support 💖
Contributors
This project exists thanks to all the people who've helped build and maintain it.
Special thanks to the below, top-100 contributors 🌟
Help us out
Awesome Privacy is a free, open source and community-maintained resource.
There's a few ways you can support us:
- Visiting, forking, or starring or our GitHub repository
- Help us keep our info up-to-date, but submitting an addition, removal or ammendment
- Leave feedback on services that you've used, to help others make a more informed decission
- Consider sponsoring us on GitHub, if you're able 💖
- Share Awesome Privacy with your network
Author
This project was originally started by
me, Alicia Sykes
(with a lot of help from the community)
I build apps which aim to help people escape big tech, secure their data,
and protect their privacy.
I have a particular interest in self-hosting, Linux, security and OSINT.
So if this type of stuff interests you, check out these other projects:
If you'd like to support the ongoing work on Awesome Privacy,
and other similar projects,
consider sponsoring me on GitHub 💖
License
All content on Awesome Privacy is freely available, within the public domain,
licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal.
The code for the website is licensed under MIT.
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