an amateur

If the online world is unavoidable or if you aren't quite ready to live off the grid, the following are small yet significant steps you can take toward safeguarding your information and online existence in our cyberconnected world. Protecting yourself and your data using these tools, skills, and knowledge will allow you to become more free and autonomous.

PRIVACY-RESPECTING

WEB BROWSERS Firefox Tor Browser Brave

PRIVACY-RESPECTING SEARCH ENGINES DuckDuckGo Qwant Startpage

Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun.

GARY KOVACS, FORMER CEO OF MOZILLA CORPORATION

WEB BROWSERS + SEARCH ENGINES

Google Chrome is deemed the best web browser in the world, ranking Google as the best search engine in the world. But here's the kicker: Google tracks and collects your data. They collect your search history (pages visited, links clicked, purchases, etc.) and use it to predict future behavior— behavioral tracking. The information collected is then shared with advertisers that use the data to create profiles based on a demographic and narrowed to promote certain products to said profiled groups.

To help prevent further intrusion, the following are less-invasive alternatives for web browsing and searching.

EMAIL

It's next to impossible to exist in the modern world without an email address. A multitude of services require one, applying for a job requires one, even schools require one (creating a new student email just for you with the service provider of their choice). The ludicrousness of it all.

The following are end-to-end encryption if both parties use them. If both don't, they are still less intrusive allaround, not collecting contact information nor giving your information to third parties.

[SEMI] ENCRYPTED EMAIL CLIENTS

ProtonMail Tutanota