Privacy

Introduction

To myself is very important to maintain privacy and security in every aspects of my life, and if you are
like me spending a lot of your time on the internet it is important that you know how to remain as much secure as you can.

When you are being watched it is more likely you to change your behavior, the way you talk and act.
Imagine every search, every video, everything you ever did on the internet was watched by someone, or a organization,
you would feel uncomfortable and scared.
It fact there is no way to remain 100% anonymous, but there is ways to be very secure.
So that's why i made this simple guide to help you.

Browser Choice
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First, i don't recommend you using Google Chrome.

Recommended browsers.

Tor

Should be your choice if you need more anonymity. It's a modified version of Firefox, has pretty good security add-ons and encryption.
By default, the Tor browser may not be the best alternative for everyone. Because it uses the Tor network,
which routes traffic over three different hops, download speeds are quite slow.
I recommend you researching a little about it before starting using it.

Firefox

Fast, reliable, open source and respects your privacy, easier to switch from other browsers like Chrome, Opera etc.

Out of the box, Firefox is not the best for privacy, but it can be customized and hardened,
as explained in the Firefox privacy guide.
Be sure to disable telemetry in Firefox, which is a feature that will collect
“technical and interaction data” and also “install and run studies” within your browser.

Privacy add-ons for firefox:

uBlock origin
Decentral Eyes
HTTPS Everywhere
Privacy Badger
uMatrix
NoScript
User-Agent Switcher
Ghostery

Brave

Brave is a Chromium-based browser that is fast, clean, secure and very
privacy-focused by default with a built-in ad blocker.
The main developer behind Brave is Brandon Eich, who formally worked for Mozilla.
For out-of-the-box privacy and security, Brave is a great option.
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Privacy focused email Providers

ProtonMail
Mailfence
Disroot
Countermail
NeoMailbox

Protecting personal information

Start by removing old accounts you had on any social-media or service.
Check any personal info that can be public, and remove it.

Avoid using personal pictures. If you do, keep them private to only people you trust.
Don't use public WiFi!

Create a fake identity, it is important to make people confused about who you are,
if you make some of your info "mixed" with fake one
it can be hard to doxers or other people
find you. Ask someone to do this for you, or do it yourself, try to search every
info you could have posted online before.

You can check if you email was leaked here:
Haveibeenpwned.com
Here you can check your passwords:
Haveibeenpwned Passwords
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Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

These are the VPNs that i personally recommend,
all providers listed here are outside the US, use encryption, accept Bitcoin, support OpenVPN and have a no logging policy.

Using a VPN provider will not make you 100% anonymous. But it will give you a better privacy.
A VPN is not a tool for illegal activities. Don't rely on a "no log" policy.

Mullvad
BlackVPN
ExpressVPN
AirVPN

And others...

Password Managers

If you are currently using a password manager software like 1Password, LastPass, Roboform or iCloud Keychain, you should pick an alternative here.

Bitwarden

Bitwarden is among the easiest and safest solutions to store all of your logins and passwords while
conveniently keeping them synced between all of your devices.
If you don't want to use the Bitwarden cloud, you can easily host your own Bitwarden server.

KeePass

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. All passwords in one database,
which is locked with one master key or a key file. The databases are encrypted using the best and
most secure encryption algorithms currently known: AES and Twofish. See also: KeePassX.
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Encryption of data

I use VeraCrypt full disk encryption for all of my drives and partitions.
VeraCrypt adds enhanced security to the algorithms used for system and partitions encryption making it immune to new developments in attacks.

it also solves many vulnerabilities and security issues found in TrueCrypt, the old industry standard for full disk encryption.

Steganography involves hiding sensitive information (which may be encrypted) inside of ordinary data (for example, encrypting an image file
and then hiding it in an audio file). With plausible deniability, data is encrypted in a way that prevents an adversary from being able to prove
that the information they are after exists (for example, one password may decrypt benign
data and another password, used on the same file, could decrypt sensitive data).

Privacy Respecting search engines

SearX

An open source metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing information
about its users. No logs, no ads and no tracking.

StartPage

Google search results, with complete privacy protection. Behind StartPage is
a European company that has been obsessive about privacy since 2006.

DuckDuckGo

The search engine that doesn't track you. Some of DuckDuckGo's code is free software hosted at GitHub,
but the core is proprietary. Based in USA.

Domain Name System (DNS)

DnsCrypt - Tool

DNSCrypt is a protocol for securing communications between a client and a DNS resolver.
The DNSCrypt protocol uses high-speed high-security elliptic-curve cryptography and is very similar to DNSCurve,
but focuses on securing communications between a client and its first-level resolver.

CloudNS - Service

An Australian based security focused DNS provider. Features: DNSCrypt Support to provide confidentially and message integrity,
complete trust validation of DNSSEC enabled names, namecoin resolution of
.bit domain names and no domain manipulation or logging.

Notrack

A network-wide DNS server which blocks Tracking sites. Currently works in Debian and Ubuntu.

Text and Video Messaging

Secure your text messages.


Pidgin (windows)

Pidgin is a popular free and open source IM client that lets you chat to users on AIM, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo and many more. OTR (Off-the-record)
is a plugin that combines AES encryption, perfect forward secrecy, and the SHA-1 hash
function to ensure strong encryption for IM sessions.
As with GnuPG for emails, initial setup is a bit of a pain, but once done operation is seamless.

Keybase

Keybase is a key directory that maps social media identities to encryption keys (including, but not limited to PGP keys) in a publicly
auditable manner. Keybase offers an end-to-end encrypted chat and cloud storage system, called Keybase Chat and the Keybase
filesystem respectively. Files placed in the public portion of the filesystem are served from a public endpoint, as well as locally from a filesystem mounted by the Keybase client.
Anti malware / Anti virus software / Others

Malware Bytes
Bitdefender
CCleaner

Email clients

It is always good to be updated on emails and not have to log in in every of them to check new notifications
that's why i recommend these safe email clients that you can download to your pc

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform email, news,
and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

Claws Mail

Claws Mail is a free and open source, GTK+ based email and news client.
It offers easy configuration and an abundance of features.

Enigmail

A security extension to Thunderbird and Seamonkey. It enables you to write and receive
email messages signed and/or encrypted with the OpenPGP standard.
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Encrypted Messengers
Are you currently using a Messenger like WhatsApp, Viber, LINE, Telegram or Threema?
You should consider picking an alternative here.

Signal

Signal is a mobile app developed by Open Whisper Systems. The app provides instant messaging,
as well as voice and video calling. All communications are end-to-end encrypted
Edward Snowden recommends using softwares by Open Whisper Systems like this one.

Riot.im

Riot.im is a decentralized free-software chatting application based on the Matrix protocol,
a recent open protocol for real-time communication offering E2E encryption.
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PC Operating Systems

I recommend you switching to Linux based OS, you can always dual boot your system with Windows and Linux up to your choice
You can also run your fav Linux system from a USB or a CD,

Debian
Tails
Ubuntu