I use aliases, because so many databases get security breaches. To a certain extent, i may need to trust the people who i share my name with, but i don’t trust their security measures.

They will tweak the most unimportant detail and say; we listened to you, now take it!

I asked about it too, read the answers here:

https://phtn.app/post/lemmy.world/5698358

Yes, the quantity can be absurd, though i usually use things like anonaddy. As for being save, i’m just not sure about this. The other day i read about wormgpt - like chatbot, but for malicious hackers - and i think that is pretty worrying. So far, you can check quite some signs that things are phishing attempts, because they are usually quite clunky, but things evolve. I used to read on r/scams to keep up with common scam tactics (also to warn my dad who hasn’t a clue about these things), but i haven’t found an alternative community on the fediverse so far.

I replaced youtube with newpipe and freetube or invidious. Though i think freetube still gives data to google, or so i read somewhere. So, i wonder how people replace the play store. Only use apps through f-droid?

Well, i try to use their services as little as possible, but i still have a play store account. And an old gmail address. Degoogling, for me at least, is more of a process, rather than a one time act of abandoning it.

I have been using startpage for years :-)

I didn’t switch it on, i hope i’m alert enough to spot all phishing attempts. However, i have to admit that reading about AI getting used more and more for malicious scams, makes me pretty nervous. I can easily recognize scams and also read about them to stay up to date, but i don’t know if i will be able to spot them in the future.