I plan to write about how to become self-sovereign with your data and computing and on-line life in general, regularly adding more content here, so stay tuned. Eventually, this content will be moved to https://degoogle.io, but not just yet.
Holding your own data is hard
[26/Jun/2025]
Self sovereign data is as risky as self custody Bitcoin — doesn’t mean you do the normie thing and give up! “Yeah, but what are you gonna do?”
Getting free from Google and Apple for your data storage is a massive and difficult job – as designed. Even the phone, it’s hard to use a Google/Apple free device if you have your data with them. You can’t extract yourself all at once… there is a lot to do, but you can chip away and eventually all the pieces come together.
Doing something is better than nothing, then doing something more is better than stopping there.
To help, I have ParmaDrive – this is a machine that, besides being a Bitcoin node, is designed to help you store your own data safely.
STEP ONE is to put a copy of your data on the 16TB drive, and practice accessing it in preference to “the cloud”.
STEP TWO is to have a copy on anothet drive in your home STEP THREE is to have a copy offsite (more on that below)
STEP FOUR is to delete your data from cloud services now that you have copies and geographical refund.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 1 You can buy a second external hard drive, manually sync it with your first drive and then take it offsite. Periodically you have to take a risk by bringing it back to the original site, syncing, then taking it back offsite.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 2 You can have a second ParmaDrive kept offsite, which maintains a permanent private connection that I will configure. Each night, any changes to the data is backed up automatically. It’s kind of like Apple time machine snapshots. You can browse the snapshot and download any files that you might have lost.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 3 Same as option 2 but a friend, ParmaTwim, has the second machine, and you reserve drive space to reciprocate encrypted backups. You don’t need to trust each other because neither can see the others’ data as it’s encrypted.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 4 You can do option 3 but with another customer as a ParmaTwin. Again you don’t need to trust them but it is nice to make contact and get to know each other. Just ask to be on a list when you order a machine.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 5 You can ParmaTwin with more than one person if it helps you feel more secure. You can also offer to be a ParmaTwin for more than one person and you can even ask for a fee – be your own mini data centre.
REMOTE BACKUPS – OPTION 6 You can sync to ParmaData, a datacentre I haven’t yet made available. Later.