Personal Safety in a Digital World

Last updated Mar. 2025

So. You want to take steps to make yourself or your family more safe from digital dangers, but you aren't really sure how to go about it. Maybe you've seen resources on this, but they don't seem aimed at you. They might have a lot of info, but they don't teach you how to prioritize, or how to start.

This webpage is a place to start.

This page swings back and forth between things to understand and things to act on.

Explanations are as short as possible. They will rely on links for you to follow if you don't understand or aren't convinced. Actions will be in the form of commands; some will be simple, some will have links to guides. The further you get, the harder the actions get; you will have to be learning as you go. In order to follow this easier-to-harder pattern, some of the most important things are placed later.

Stage 1 - Getting Started At Home

  1. Understand: You are being surveilled.
    Several of the largest and wealthiest companies in the world rely on highly invasive surveillance of as many people as possible. Governments follow roughly the same playbook, and countless smaller corporations, special interest groups, and criminal organizations follow it too. They do it because it works. Information about people can be used in a shocking number of ways to control, exploit, or defraud them or those they are connected to.
    Privacy issues are involved in nearly every digital safety problem there is, from identity theft to propaganda. You might not understand yet how "your data" can be weaponized against you. Do not let this stop you from taking steps to protect yourself and your loved ones. Privacy is a pillar of safety.
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  2. Understand: Knowledge is power, and convenience is a trap.
    The best antidote to surveillance technologies is knowledge about what the devices around you are doing - and how and why they do it. Be suspicious of shiny prepackaged "solutions" that don't encourage you to look under the hood. As you learn the way things work and migrate away from things that work against you, you will find yourself more able to make things work for you.
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  3. Understand: You can make a difference.
    Perfect security is not possible, and perfect privacy is not the goal. Different people face different risks and dangers. You don't need to learn all the risks and solutions before you take real, beneficial action. No matter who you are, thoughtful, serious, incremental steps will reduce risk and make you more safe.
    . . .

  4. Act: On your computer, install and use Mozilla Firefox as your main web browser. There are other options that prioritize your privacy and your control of your devices (and you might want of those later on). Firefox has its own flaws, but it is still the "old reliable" option, and the most accessible way to deal with the big problems Come back to this webpage in Firefox to continue.
    . . .

  5. Act: Inside of Firefox, change your default search engine to DuckDuckGo. Here is a guide.
    Why: "Personalized" internet search engines are one of the major tools for surveillance and one of the most powerful tools for manipulating your online behavior. You need to be able to filter online content down to just what you care about, but you need it to happen in a way you can see, understand, control, and occasionally turn off.
    . . .

  6. Act: Inside of Firefox, install the Privacy Badger extension.
    Yes, there are alternatives, but this is the gold-standard anti-surveillance browser addon. (If you have the time, read their FAQ. For now, don't worry about what you don't understand.)
    . . .

  7. Act: Inside of Firefox, install the uBlock Origin extension.
    As of 2025, this is the gold-standard general purpose ad-blocker.
    Why: You've already taken the most basic anti-tracking steps to reduce the largest , but ads are also one of the major carriers of malware and other objectionable content. Use the uBlock Origin settings themselves to selectively 'pause' the adblocker on trustworthy sites - and turn the adblocker back on if your trust is violated.
    . . .

Stage 2 - Getting Started On Mobile

  1. Understand: Your mobile phone is much worse than your home computer.
    Your phone has a wide range of built-in sensors, and much more access to your life than desktop or even a laptop. Your phone is also much harder for you to control, both in a technical who-is-giving-orders-to-this-software way and in a personal excercising-self-control-over-your-actions sort of way. These surveillance treasure-troves are exploited regularly by a dizzying range of bad actors. For now, use your phone as little as possible, and for as few things as possible.
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  2. Act: Delete apps you don't need, and consider if you really need the ones you think you do. Many of the most used mobile apps are a thin veneer of some useful functionality on top of different primary functionality. That real purpose is the detailed surveillance that you (maybe) "agreed" to in some vague part of an enormous and unreadable Terms Of Service. doc. Over the years, Google and Apple have dealt with this situation by occasionally squashing criminal or controversial offenders and by aggressively squashing or undermining security tools that would threaten their own ability to collect your sensitive data.
    Unfortunately, we will be stuck using app-store provided apps to try to do better - but there are ways of judging between good apps and bad apps. For now, just purge as much possible (though maybe read ahead first, if you already have some pro-privacy apps).
    . . .

  3. Act: On your mobile phone, install and use Signal.
    Clicking this link on your phone should open the installer.
    Why: You should not trust the confidentiality of messages or phone calls that are not end-to-end-encrypted, so use Signal (or an adequate substitute, once you have learned enough) wherever possible. More generally, be proactive and don't send anything particularly sensitive without first making it possible to use end-to-end-encryption, i.e., by getting the person you are messaging to also install Signal. (We will need to deal with email and other things later).
    . . .

  4. Act: On your mobile phone, install and use privacy-oriented search and browser tools.
    One example of how "taking control" on your Android or iPhone is harder than on your PC: Even with a more-private browser set up, you may find that links keep opening in a default browser, or that the built in "search" tool is the browser that matters. To make matters worse, mobile devices are extremely different from each other in ways that matter a lot for figuring out what is really going on. These difference are not just between Android and Apple, but between different versions of the same platform or family of devices.
    We will revisit these issues later, when we get into untangling this kind of mess. For now, just do your best. Migrating as much as possible to a better environment is a good step.

    Privacy search and browse on mobile:

    . . .

  5. Understand: You have made real progress.
    We have focused on easy steps that take as little understanding, planning, and followthrough as possible. Still, these things make a difference:
    • Blocking out organizations that want to spy on what, where, and how and where you eat, sleep, read, say and think is one of the most widely understandable motivations in digital safety - even if only because of the "ick" factor of the spying.
    • Shielding yourself from ads and surveillance does a surprising amount in the long run to block out malware, targeted scams, and certain kinds of hacking.
    • These basic changes are some of the easiest and most universally applicable steps to take. They might not be the most important steps for almost anyone, but they are good for almost everyone - and doing them first gets you started, even if it is only in a "training wheels" kind of way.
    • Privacy is becoming more important for security. AI, cybercrime, and changing political landscapes around the world are still increasing the number of ways information about you might be used against you. The nature of private information means that you frequently need to prevent leaks now to protect yourself from problems that don't start until tomorrow.
    What this implies is that from here on, the process gets more complicated. You need to learn general knowledge, not just as the reason for specific actions, but in order to work out for yourself what the specific action needs to be. That doesn't mean there will be a huge jump in technical difficulty. Look back at the last "Act" section. It gave you several choices, without a explicit choice among them; that was deliberate. Future sections in this guide are planned to lead you incrementally into those kinds of decisions (and the knowledge needed to make them).
    . . .

Stage 3 - A Temporary Source

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