I would - not for me but for an older, tech-noob person - like to set up Google Calendar for the sole purpose of syncing his mobile phone with his Thunderbird/Lightning.
Since I have never used (most of) Google's personalized apps myself, I want to make sure to lock down all privacy setting of Google calendar. (btw. are there any encryption settings?)
Is there anything special I need to check -- what about the concern that "Google will read my calendar"?
This is 2017 - and the default Google calendar app will read your data, even if you use webdav sync with a non-google calendar. Try creating some simply named events and then go to 'schedule' view - you will suddenly find decorative graphics reflecting the semantic content of your event. No idea how to change that, so I moved away from Google calendar app and denied it access to my device calendar (not sure if that is effective).
In contrast to the other answer, I think it is very valuable for Google to know what you are doing, where you are doing and whom you are doing it with in order to have more info about you - amongst other things to customize advertising.
I use Google Calendar extensively both at work and for personal purposes. I run it in HTTPS mode, so all my web-based interaction with it is encrypted. Of course, I also have it configured to send alerts by email and SMS, and neither of those are encrypted, but those are optional features. In terms of privacy settings, nobody else can even see your calendars unless you make them public. You can, however, share calendars with other individual users, as long as they have a Google account. You can also flag individual events as private. As for Google reading private calendars, I'm sure they could if they wanted to, but I doubt they would be interested. For one thing, unlike tracking the sites you visit and the links you click while browsing the web, there's no useful way to mine calendar events to make money, through advertising or anything else. Google Calendar's privacy policy: "Google takes your privacy as seriously as our own. We won't share your personal information with anyone, except under the limited circumstances required by law."
