Hello all, a message to kickstart some /e/ community action, hopefully. This year I heard from a friend that they switched to Signal messaging at work, away from Whatsapp, because of privacy-reasons. Her employer was a municipality. So, I’d thought i would draft an email about /e/ that we can all send to our:
- employers
- municipalities / council members
- governments / parliament members
Happy to hear suggestions for improvement!
here is the draft, please use it as you will!! :
Dear [fill in name of employer, municipality, city council, government or parliament member],
I am emailing you because since recently i am using a new operating system on my phone, called /e/ or “eelo”. The goal of /e/ is to develop a new form of Android, that can run on any phone that currently runs Google’s Android, but that is “unGoogled” and privacy-safe. In their own words: “We don’t scan your data on your phone or in the cloud, we don’t log or track your GPS location, we don’t collect what you’re doing with your apps. We never will.” I know that many organizations and government institutions are switching to more secure messaging apps, away from Whatsapp (like Signal and Telegram). This email is to ask you to do the same for the operating system of your employees’ phones. Android send personal user data to its servers in the US 90 times per hour (!) when the phone is active and 40 times per hour when the phone is inactive. I think it would be really good if you considered to use /e/ in the future. If you want, I will be happy to provide you with more information or with the people behind /e/!
Kind regards,
[your name]