Libb

I suppose you’re asking if I’m French? Yes. And, yes, it’s a French operator (Bouygues Mobile)

The European Union could help safeguard those borders.

Since we/The EU will be soon buying even more US weapons, I seriously doubt that.

What was once a region of the world populated with so many smart and bright people has now become the proud land of the dumb. The EU is like a headless chicken running around. And it seems rather happy about what it has become, I’m afraid to say so.

That would be the first step in claiming back what once was ours ;)

As a EU/French I vehemently oppose that idea unless we get to see the Canadian mounted police to parade here on the Champs Elysée, this next 14th July :p

Anyone have any advice?

• Ask them for their number, and see how it goes? Worst case, they will say ‘no’, end of the story. Maybe the will ask why you don’t have IG and that will be the start of an interesting conversation.
• Try to meet different kind of people? I mean it seriously. I know a lot of people around me who have IG/Facebook/X and so on but at the same time none of them make it a requirement to use it.
• Use a second phone/number for that crap content only? I barely use my ‘real’ phone (I have nothing installed on it beside what I’m required to use) still I do own a second phone just so I can easily share a number with all the services and various craps that ask for one. It’s a phone I never answer to, despite it being constantly harassed by callers. And that peace of mind (my real number is almost spam free) only costs me the 2€/month (plus the phone, I purchased used). You should be able to do something similar for social networks: have a second phone without anything personal on it, just with IG.
• Accept that you’re doomed to use IG because it’s with those ‘IG people’ and no others you want to spend your time with? I like to spend time with people reading books, it’s kinda expected we indeed read books. Would I not like to read, I would not spend as much time with them.

Are we supposed to shed a tear? The only thing I’m looking for is some alternative to my iPhone, even very basic and very feature-limited, preferably made in the EU, that would let me ditch that last piece of Apple tech I own… while still being able to easily access the banking and security apps I do need.

I too am quite surprised so few people seem to have been reading that book. I’m not even American but I’ve read it.

So much of what has been happening recently is explained in it.

Neither Tuta or Proton will neatly integrate with Apple Mail if you want to send/receive encrypted messages. At least the last I checked it required for Proton a separate client that was not bug free (can’t remember for tuta).

If you don’t care about encryption, you may want to consider the Swiss Infomaniak.

They have a cloud offer which includes cloud storage (1to base), calendar and email, plus the online version of MSOffice, all being hosted on their Swiss servers.