Above photo: An illustration symbolizing one’s digital freedom from surveillance. Substack/Techy Arab.
A practical guide to choosing your apps.
I’ve done the digging so you don’t have to.
Before we start, I’d like to give an honorable mention to self-hosting. Every app stores your data on company servers—hence hosting your own server (even on a spare laptop) is the gold standard for protecting your privacy.
I used Qwen to walk me through my first self-hosting setup. If I can do it, you can too.
Now whether you self-host or not, ordinary people (especially activists) need a framework for choosing apps. Here are the key criteria to consider the next time you evaluate an app.
Level 1 (best):
- Outside Western jurisdiction: based in a country that refuses US/EU demands and surveillance cooperation (think China/Russia/Iran)
- Open source (publishes its codebase online so the community can sniff out vulnerabilities and verify how user data is handled)
Level 2 (second-best):
- Based in a non-cooperative country
- Not open source
Take WeChat: it operates under Chinese law and may collect more data than open-source apps, but the chances of that data being shared with Western governments are near zero. Your activism against imperialism is far less likely to be weaponized against you.
Level 3 (third-best):
- Based in jurisdictions that regularly comply with Western demands
- Open source
Take Swiss service Proton: they may not have access to email content because of end-to-end encryption, but they hand over data like payment info, recovery emails, and IP logs to Western government agencies.
Level 4 (worst):
- Based in a jurisdiction complying with Western demands
- Not open source
Now that’s truly a double-whammy: not only are you unsure how your data is being processed, but they’ll be complying with subpoenas left and right.
App Recommendations
Who do I look like, not giving you apps to explore? This is reading AND hands-on.
Maps
- Organic Maps (open-source community project, best for privacy, but still maturing)
- Petal Maps (by Huawei)
Petal Maps is feature-rich and polished, has minimal trackers/permissions, and works offline.
According to its tracking report on the Google Play/Aurora Store, it has exactly one tracker (its own, no third parties), and requires 39 fairly reasonable permissions.
Compare that to Google Maps’ extensive permissions: background location tracking, unrestricted contact access, media scanning, and system-level permissions that go far beyond navigation.
Or consider Yandex Maps: despite being Russian, it’s packed with big-tech trackers.
Your Turn
Now you have the framework:
- Jurisdiction (outside US/EU?)
- Code: open source or proprietary?
- Trackers/permissions: are they minimal and reasonable?
Go get ’em, tiger.
