Quick note that Privacy does not equal anonymity and you would be vulnerable to any security attacks when connected to the internet even on maxed out security, if you wish to be anonymous on the internet, It will be difficult and you will have to sacrifice a lot to stay anonymous, I won't make a blog about anonymity because it's nearly impossible to stay completely anonymous, On the other hand, This guide will give you tips to keep your info private and ensuring that nobody knows anything about you, Please be aware that almost all mentioned apps are used by me personally, There are more options that are not mentioned in this blog, if you have one in mind, please let me know!

{FAIR WARNING THAT I DO NOT CONDONE USING ANY OF THESE APPS/SERVICES FROM THE GUIDE FOR ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, THIS GUIDE IS AIMED TO PROTECT YOUR DATA AGAINST AI DATA FARMING AND ADVERTISERS}

STAGE 1: BROWSERS

Firefox-based browsers are solid option when it comes to privacy but if you prefer chromium-based browsers (not recommended), Then here's my favorite and best option for a private chromium browser!

Brave Browser

Key features:

1. Has built-in Ad-block and Anti tracker, Great browser to block youtube ads (and it's still working since chromium browsers were forced to migrate to manifest v3.)
   
   
2. Simple and comfortable, Of course there are unnecessary things on the browser like brave news, brave wallet, Etc but they can be removed/hidden and They won't bother you much.
   
   
3. Stats to see how much ads and trackers have been blocked, How much data you saved and how much time you saved.
   
   
4. Supports Tor browsing, in case you are lazy to install tor browser seperately (Note that it's not recommended to use tor servers on a chromium browser because it will make your privacy a little fragile on tor servers).
   
   
5. You can sync across devices without the hassle of creating an account to sync your browsing data, {Example: Keeping your Brave mobile updated with your browsing history done on your computer}, I personally think it's actually way cool in case you want to save bookmarks from your phone and access it on your pc.
   
   
6. Allows you to see how much ram does your tab takes (if you hover it on the tab for little long).

For Firefox-based browsers, here's my recommendations.

Hardened Firefox

Stock firefox is fine, but it's not enough to stay protected, Look on the web for ways to harden your firefox browser, I personally suggest a browser that's better than stock firefox.

Librewolf

It's like Firefox but with extra features for better privacy, you can harden it too if you would like, I will show you key features (according to my usage with Librewolf), Librewolf does not support mobile devices unfortuantely but a better option for mobile browsing using Firefox-based browser is **Firefox nightly** for incognito browsing.

Key features:

1. Best browser to use as incognito browsing.
   
   
2. portable version available in case if you have maxxed out storage or you don't want to go back to your IT convincing them to install it for you.
   
   
3. Great to block fingerprinting (prefer using canva blocker extension).
   
   
4. Has Ublock origin extension pre-installed.
   
   
5. Uses Cloudflare's DNS when you setting it up on max protection.
   
   
6. it does not impact on performance much (it depends on how much ram your tab takes and how many active tabs do you have open).
   
   
7. you can erase everything saved on your browser after you close it completely.
   
   
8. Has Google safe browsing feature to prevent visiting phishing websites.

Tor Browser

Great for "anonymity", allows you to access to webs that are not accessible by a normal browser (dark web).

{Please never use a VPN with tor because that will weaken your privacy}

ADVICES??

      1. When using firefox-based browser, Use the following extensions:

• Ublock Origin
  
• Privacy Badger (Because it uses AI to block trackers) 
• Fastforward (When using shortlinks that makes you wait for 5 seconds or more)
• LocalCDN (Works best on firefox-based browsers)

{You don't have to install these extensions on brave browser except **fastforward**}

      2. Never save your passwords on browsers because any potential virus or malware hidden  on your computer or any phishing website you have visited could access to your hidden folder on your computer and eventually stealing all your passwords, sending it to the scammer/hacker to access to all your accounts and botting it for further scams and hacks like a plague.

{This is a security advice rather than privacy advice.}

      3. Make sure your browser has "Do not track me" feature (it's featured on firefox as far as I know.), Some websites doesn't respect that signal so you have to mess around with settings each time you visit a different website to minimize tracking.

      4. Always tick off any setting that collects telemetry data even if its anonymous.

{Unless if you trust the service.}

      5. Use a different browser for incognito browsing like hardened librewolf and use vpn so your isp don't see your activity.

      6. Do not expect to be fully invulnerable to fingerprints because there are some fingerprinting scripts that can't be detected by fingerprint blockers. (I have added this note because I don't want people to pull me bad because they have visited browserleaks.com and tried it by themselves).

STAGE 2: PASSWORD MANAGER AND AUTHENTICATOR

For a better password protection, I have mentioned that you should not use your browser's password manager, Use an encrypted password manager, And to add more security, you would need to setup 2FA (if the website supports it) using an encrypted 2FA app.

Bitwarden

This is my all-time favorite password manager, Because the service is free and you don't have to pay for premium, Encrypts all your passwords in a secure encrypted vault, Good to lower the risk of virus and malware attacks (spywares could be exceptional unless you don't check on the "show password" when entering your passsword.

Key features:

1. There's no need to purchase for a physical security key as bitwarden acts like a security key for instant account log-in.
   
   
2. Hard to recover your account (which is bad considering the fact that you will have to write the password in some physical notes to not lose the account), So that hackers or anyone won't bother to access your bitwarden account.

Ente Auth

End-2-End-Encrypted 2FA app to make your accounts more secure, Best alternative to Google Auth and Microsoft Auth.

ADVICE??

1. Never link your account with your phone number because that will defeat the purpose of having 2FA app linked (it will make your security more fragile).

STAGE 3: CLOUD STORAGE

If you want to backup some important data without any company using your data for AI training, Then here's the following recommendations

MEGA

End-2-End-Encrypted cloud storage, 20GB free storage.

Proton Drive

5GB free storage, Nothing much to say about honestly.

Tixte

15GB free storage, Only used to store media (photos, videos, etc) for embedding on social media (generally used to bypass discord's upload limit) and other sites, it allows you to have cool custom subdomains (up to 3 free) to embed your files.

{Do not store any illegal content on these platforms.}
 

ADVICE??

1. when sharing a photo, make sure to remove EXIF data because EXIF could possibly contain some personal data.

STAGE 4: SOCIAL MEDIA

Yeah because why not?

Mastodon

Free and open source, Great social app, Alternative to X/Twitter.

Bluesky

Best alternative to Mastodon and X/Twitter, Has almost all popular twitter accounts migrated there, Owned by the founder of twitter.

Key features:

1. Set a custom domain name handle for free (Mastodon has this feature but different).
   
   
2. Comes with many moderation options to enable and disable.
   
   
3. Supports 3rd party app clients, it even has a feature where you can set up passwords to log on 3rd party clients without giving your account login info.
   
   
4. Sort the posts you see on bluesky with feeds.

And there's more features I can cite here but it's best to stay here, All features I have said are coming from my experience.

Spacehey

The platform you are using.. duh

ADVICE??

1. Only use social media to give opinions and share media only, don't talk about your personal life, your personal problems, etc because it could be archived by anyone and it will be seen by everyone even if the service got shutdown. (most likely it won't happen if you are unpopular, But just to be safe, Don't.)

STAGE 5: MESSANGING APPS

Signal

Best Alternative to Whatsapp, Although both are E2EE (End 2 End Encryption), Signal is trusted by everyone because Whatsapp is owned by meta which is known to be collecting crazy amount of your data, Nobody knows if there's backdoors that meta has sat to access to your messages/account-info.

Signal is working on a protocol that prevents un-encrypting your data using quantum computers, this won't matter to you much unless you are a suspected criminal.

{Signal can only hand your account creation date only to your law enforcement since all your account info and your messages are encrypted, it's worth mentioning that signal can't give your phone number to anyone because they don't know you, they only have your phone number and that's it, They can't do much with it.}

Telegram

Not really secure on normal chats but it supports E2EE on private chats, The UI is clean and it has satisfying features that I love about.

BUT REN !! TELEGRAM IS NO LONGER THE SAME AND THERE IS BAD PEOPLE USES TELEGRAM !!

To my experience, That's true, There are a bad groups out there in telegram but somehow it's hidden but here's the thing, Telegram is working hard to remove these groups from their platform and if you think about privacy much or genuinely more concerned about the future of telegram, it's best to use signal to remove your paranoia.

Element (Matrix)

Great alternative to discord (and possibly telegram), Best platform for privacy-focused nerds.

ADVICES??

1. Never tell anyone about your personal life, personal problems etc on public group chats or servers, even if they are encrypted (This advice is best to applied on discord too).
   
   
2. If your friends refuses to migrate from discord, use Vencord to minimize tracking (it will only block crash reports and analytics and no you won't get banned for using a modded client.)
   
   
3. (Discord only) Do not talk in a big servers because there are bots that join these servers and scraps all messages sent on discord, They will sell this data for anyone whos willing to look for what have you sent without joining any servers.

STAGE 6: EMAIL PROVIDERS

please keep in mind that private email providers don't read your data and sometimes they don't encrypt your data, what do I mean by that? well if you are going to use email to send somebody an email, Your sent email is encrypted to your end and the receiver won't have your email encrypted (that's if they use different email provider) which means that any random email provider can look through your sent emails from the receiver's inbox, and it's worth mentioning that sometimes they don't encrypt your account info, it will be easy to recover your account however they will delete your email history so that no intruder can look through your emails, Not saying it's a bad thing but it's worth mentioning in the guide.

{although I am not very sure about this info, it's best to not take my words for it}

Proton mail

Great for privacy, allows you to create prop email address so that companies don't sell your email address to random company for advertisement.

Tuta

I haven't tried Tuta myself but I think it's worth mentioning it here.

ADVICES??

1. if you don't trust a website and they force you to create an account, use a temporary email or a prop email to continue using their service.
   
   
2. NEVER SHARE YOUR PHONE NUMBER WITH ANY WEBSITE, ANY EMAIL PROVIDER OR ANYONE EVEN IF ITS FOR ACCOUNT RECOVERY {Phone numbers can be easily hacked without any physical interaction, And no this is not about sim swapping, Please watch this video}.
   
   
3. use different passwords on different accounts, and if you can't remember them all, use a password manager.

STAGE 7: VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS (VPNs)

NEVER pay for commerical vpns because when you use a commerical VPN, everything you browse are logged and viewed by your VPN provider, there are VPNs that doesn't log your browsing activity.

Proton VPN

Best and free No-log VPN you can use and trust, Although we know that free VPNs are not trustworthy, But Proton VPN is the only free VPN I can trust and recommend here, you would need premium to choose servers you like.

Mullvad VPN

Best and paid No-log VPN you can use and trust, Recommended by many people and supports anonymous payments.


{VPNs only hides your IP address and doesn't show your ISP your browsing activity however you would still be vulnerable for various hacks, VPNs are best used to bypass censorship and hide your browsing activity from ISP only, You don't need VPNs to hide your IP address if your ISP supports Dynamic IP.}

FINAL STAGE: SEARCH ENGINES

Brave search

I prefer this one a lot because it looks similar to google and it has a better advanced AI to summarize or answer your questions and it doesn't (mostly) spit BS on your questions unlike google AI summary.

{REN'S FAVORITE}

Startpage

I never tried it myself but it's another cool search engine you can use to ditch google.

DuckDuckGo

Used by a lot of people, Highly recommended by a lot of people.

{I don't trust them much personally.}

This was a long run but this is all I can recommend and suggest to enhance your online privacy, Thank you for reading this guide, and remember most of these services are experienced by me and some of them are just random recommendations I can think of so it's not really that solid guide I can say but hey this is the best I can provide plus this is my first time doing this, I am not ready to get attacked by random nerds like me, Always protect your privacy for the right thing and don't let AI companies scrap your data without your knowledge, I will keep the blog updated to ensure accuracy and add more recommendations, That's it for today, As always, Love y'all !!