Getting my life back, Part III - Self-hosting my personal data (contacts, bookmarks, passwords, calendar, notes, tasks)

This third part of the series “Getting my life back”, is about personal data privacy. Although it’s a huge topic, I will just try to give some further details on how I manage my personal data, after of course having already got rid of my social media accounts, one of the most dangerous personal privacy leaks.

In addition to that, on my previous post about smartphone addiction, I mentioned that my smartphone now serves me only as a means for better productivity. In this guide, you will find out how!

Note: Whenever the term “productivity” is used in this blog, this doesn’t mean becoming a better employee, manager, businessman etc.. By seeing things from a different perspective, productivity is a “tool” (to be more specific, a procedure with the use of an efficient tool-set) that assists one to finish with all the usual responsibilities (including one’s job) ASAP - using special tools and techniques - and have as much time as possible to spend on everything else (hobbies, art, knowledge, quality time with family and friends etc.).

Before you proceed with this post

In the previous posts I have already mentioned how I use my own cloud with Nextcloud.

I have also written two posts on GTD, one providing information about Todo.txt and a second one describing how exactly I GTD.

I suggest you to at least have a look at these articles in order to understand the context of this post.

Contacts

For my contacts on Android, I used to sync using Google Contacts for years. After setting up Nextcloud, I decided to stop letting Google know who I know and self-host them. For this reason I now use:

• Nextcloud Contacts to which I imported/edited/etc my exported Gmail contacts

• DAVx⁵ to sync contacts between my Android Smartphone and my Nextcloud server

Bookmarks

For bookmark syncing I use:

• Nextcloud Bookmarks

along with

• Nextcloud Bookmarks for Android

and

• Floccus addon for Firefox.

For the record, I don’t sync all my bookmarks. I just use the above combo to create a “shared folder” of bookmarks between my Desktop PC and the smartphone.

Password Management

For passwords I use:

• KeePassXC, with the database stored on a Nextcloud folder, automatically synced with Nextcloud server

• Keepass2Android on my smartphone which accessess the same database stored on the Nextcloud server

Calendar

For this purpose I use:

• Nextcloud Calendar

along with

• DAVx⁵ to sync the calendar between my Android Smartphone and my Nextcloud server

and

• Simple Calndar Pro to manage the synced calendar on the smartphone

Note Keeping

Note keeping is a very important part of my GTD system. For this purpose I use:

• QOwnNotes on my desktop PC, with the notes (.txt files) stored on a Nextcloud folder, automatically synced with the Nextcloud server

• Notes for Nextcloud

along with

• Notes for Android

Tasks

For my GTD system I use:

• Qtodotxt on my desktop PC, reading todo.txt and done.txt from a Nextcloud folder automatically synced with the Nextcloud server

• Simpletask for Nextcloud on my smartphone

Note: Please refer to “Before you proceed with this post” section of this article for further information about this section.

Conclusion

It’s obvious that having my own cloud infrastructure made the transition to self-hosting all my personal data a very easy task.

This way I ensure (as much as I can) that no third party will have access on the people I know, services I use, stuff I do etc.

However, it doesn’t mean that self-hosting this information provides better security.

A Nextcloud server requires a Linux machine with various services running on it and one should take care of its configuration to make it as secure as possible.