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What is going on

As you may have heard already, because of brexit, Google is moving UK citizens data from the Northern Ireland data controller to the US one (Google LLC). Leaving the EU, UK citizens are not protected anymore by GDPR, and while this may be unfair, Google is legally allowed to do it.

The problem

Even if I'm an Italian citizen and I live in Italy, a few days ago I received this email from them:

What's wrong with it?

The point is that I'm an Italian citizen, living in Italy. I have nothing to do with UK (even if I lived there for a few years in the past, my account was created from Italy).

Why do they mention "UK leaving EU" to me, if I don't live in UK?

I tried to contact them multiple times on their @Google account on Twitter, but I got no reply at all. I tried to search online and it looks like I'm not alone, they are doing this to many other people: https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/29317992?hl=en&authuser=1

Looking for help

What should I do? Is this legally allowed?

If there was an easy way to complain with them, I would have done it already, but I've tried to search on their website (even googling it... no pun intended) but I couldn't find a single contact form to report this issue and of course they are ignoring both Twitter and that forum I linked previously.

Should I report them to the Privacy Authority? If yes, how?

Full text of the email

Here is the full text of the email I received:

We’re improving our Terms of Service and making them easier for you to understand. 
The changes will take effect on 31 March 2020, and they won’t impact the way that you use 
Google services. And, because the United Kingdom (UK) is leaving the European Union (EU), 
Google LLC will now be the service provider and the data controller responsible for your 
information and for complying with applicable privacy laws for UK consumer users.

For more details, we’ve provided a summary of the key changes and Frequently asked questions. 
And the next time that you visit Google, you’ll have the chance to review and accept the new Terms. 
At a glance, here’s what this update means for you:

•   Improved readability: While our Terms remain a legal document, we’ve done our best to make them 
    easier to understand, including by adding links to useful information and providing definitions.
•   Better communication: We’ve clearly explained when we’ll make changes to our services 
    (like adding or removing a feature) and when we’ll restrict or end a user’s access. 
    And we’ll do more to notify you when a change negatively impacts your experience on our services.
•   Adding Google Chrome, Google Chrome OS and Google Drive to the Terms: Our improved Terms now 
    cover Google Chrome, Google Chrome OS and Google Drive, which also have service-specific terms 
    and policies to help you understand what’s unique to those services.
•   Your service provider and data controller is now Google LLC: Because the UK is leaving the EU, 
    we’ve updated our Terms so that a United States-based company, Google LLC, is now your service 
    provider instead of Google Ireland Limited. Google LLC will also become the data controller 
    responsible for your information and complying with applicable privacy laws. 
    We’re making similar changes to the Terms of Service for YouTube, YouTube Paid Services and 
    Google Play. These changes to our Terms and privacy policy don’t affect your privacy settings 
    or the way that we treat your information (see the privacy policy for details). 
    As a reminder, you can always visit your Google Account to review your privacy settings and 
    manage how your data is used.

If you’re the guardian of a child under the age required to manage their own Google Account and 
you use Family Link to manage their use of Google services, please note that when you accept 
our new Terms, you do so on their behalf as well, and you may want to discuss these changes with them.

And of course, if you don’t agree to our new Terms and what we can expect from each other as you 
use our services, you can find more information about your options in our Frequently asked questions.

Thank you for using Google’s services.
Your Google team

I've been recently concerned about the future of Google Talk service and all the implications related to recent changes to the existing service. What has been a nice implementation of the Jabber/XMPP protocol once, now is just a closed and proprietary service. The main problem with these changes are:

• Jabber/XMPP users of other services won't be able to talk anymore to Google Talk users
• Google is killing some of their native clients (like the Windows one) and forcing users to Chrome or Android/iOS versions
• Google has disabled the possibility to turn off chat recording (you can still do it individually, for each contact)

So, what are the alternatives to Google Talk? Luckly you have at least three options.

Using an existing Jabber/XMPP service

This is surely the easiest way to get a Jabber/XMPP account. There is a list of free services available here: https://xmpp.net/directory.php registering a new account is usually very easy. Most of the clients have an option that let you register the account while you are configuring it. For example if you are using Pidgin and you want to register an account with DukGo service, you can configure it in this way:

Using an hosted Jabber/XMPP service with your domain

A service called HostedIM offer a very nice service. Basically if you already have a domain, you can register an account on hosted.im, setup your DNS following their instructions and create an account directly on their dashboard. You can create up to 5 accounts for free. If you need more, they offer a paid service for that. In my case all I had to do was updating my DNS with the following configuration:

_xmpp-client._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 10 0 5222 xmpp1.hosted.im.
_xmpp-client._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 20 0 5222 xmpp2.hosted.im.
_xmpp-server._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp2.hosted.im.
_xmpp-server._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 10 0 5269 xmpp1.hosted.im.
_jabber._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp2.hosted.im.
_jabber._tcp.andreagrandi.it. IN SRV 10 0 5269 xmpp1.hosted.im.

Hosting your own Jabber/XMPP service

If you have a VPS and some syasdmin skills, why not hosting your own XMPP server? There are different options available, but I can suggest you three in particular:

• OpenFire
• ejabberd
• Prosody

I haven't tried any of these personally, because for the moment I'm using the service offered by hosted.im. I'm curious anyway to configure at least one of them and when I will do it I will publish a dedicated tutorial about it.

Conclusion

Given the recent changes that Google is doing to all their services, I'm more than happy when I can abandon one of them, because I personally don't like to rely (and bind myself) to a single company, expecially if that company closes a service whenever they want and try to lock you inside their ecosystem.

Introduction

Even if it's not a new model, the HTC Desire is still a very good Android device, thanks to its 1Ghz CPU and 512 Mb RAM, but one of the biggest problems of this phone is that it comes with only 148Mb available in the ROM. Once the operating system is installed (ROM I mean), after installing few useful applications you'll end the available space very soon. There are many apps available, like App2SD that move your applications to the SD card, but it's not enough because only the application is moved, not the data. To move the data to the SD card, there is a very nice utility called Data2SD. Please note that this procedure requires you to reflash your device and partition your SD card, so please do a complete backup before proceding.

What you need

• a rooted HTC Desire (you need to have a rooted phone with a recovery already installed)
• a 4Gb (or bigger) microSD, at least class 4 (class 6 is even better while class 10 is reported not working with this phone)
• a microSD card reader
• CyanogenMod 7: http://download.cyanogenmod.com/get/update-cm-7.0.3-Desire-signed.zip
• Data2SD: Data2SDInstallerX1.zip and Data2SDReInstallerX1.zip
• Google Apps: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps
• GParted: you can use the version available on Ubuntu Linux or you can download a live Linux image with GParted installed: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Backup your data

Before following these instructions, please do a complete backup of your microSD, of your original ROM (using Nandroid or similar) ecc...

Prepare the microSD card

• Open GParted on your Ubuntu Linux or use the GParted Live CD/USB.
• Delete all partitions on this microSD
• Create the first one using FAT32 filesystem, leaving 2Gb (2047Mb) available at the end.
• Create a second partition using ext4 filesystem.
• Confirm your changes
• Copy CyanogenMod7 rom, Data2SD installers and Google Apps on FAT32 partition

CyanogenMod 7 installation

• Reboot your phone into Recovery (turn it off then press volume down + power)
• WIPE all data (userdata, cache ecc...)
• Choose "Install from SD card" and select CyanogenMod7 installation zip
• when finished reboot your phone
• Enter your Wifi settings, language ecc.... DO NOT enter your Google account settings.
• reboot your phone

Data2SD installation

• Boot into Recovery again
• Choose "Install from SD card" and select Data2SDInstallerX1.zip (please note, you may have to turn off the signature verification in Other->Turn off ecc...)
• when finished reboot your phone
• now you should see 1,97Gb if you go in Settings->Storage->Internal Storage->Total space

Google Apps installation

• Reboot your phone into Recovery
• Choose "Install from SD card" and select the Google Apps zip file
• reboot your phone

Conclusion

You now have 1,97Gb total space available instead of 148Mb. Enjoy your HTC Desire!

Update Aug 1, 2012: since December 2011 I don't have an HTC Desire anymore. These informations could be still valid but in any other case I don't have the possibility to help you more.