(3 mins read)

        These are some things you can do to be safer on the internet, while only either
        improving your overall experience of surfing the internet or not worsening it.
    

EMAIL         top

      - Do not use Gmail (except for things like youtube or play store).
      - Move to tutanota if you do not need IMAP.
      - If you need IMAP, rethink if you actually need it.
      - Custom clients like superhuman are known to be privacy invading. Unless your entire
        job is to read and write emails, you probably don't need a custom client.
      - If you still need IMAP, use protonmail with protonmail bridge.
    

BROWSER         top

      - Use firefox.
      - Disable all data collection from the settings and set all fingerprint protection
        and stuff to max.
      - Switch to DuckDuckGo from Google as your default search engine.
      - Use uBlock Origin and ClearURLs extensions for ad blocking.
      - Firefox's Gecko is the only other mainstream browser engine left apart from Apple's
        webkit and Google's blink/chromium, you should support it.
      - See Manifest V3.
    

MESSAGING         top

      - Use signal.
      - It's not the most secure and the phone number requirement is annoying but it's a
        good sweet spot between adoption/UX/security.
    

NETWORK         top

      - Your devices likely use your ISPs' default DNS servers.
      - These servers are often unencrypted and your ISPs know what websites you visit.
      - You can switch to custom DNS servers from your device settings (for example, 1.1.1.1
        is a decent public encrypted DNS server from cloudflare).
      - You likely don't need a VPN, and VPNs aren't as secure as not might think either
        (see India, Russia, China, EU, UK, and fingerprinting).
      - If you need a VPN, obscura is great (it's like a proxy before Mullvad).
    

KEYBOARD         top

      - Your phone's keyboard can track a lot of what you do.
      - For android, FlorisBoard is a good alternative.
      - You can also just use GBoard but disable any sort of tracking from their settings.
      - Brownie points if you can disable internet access for your keyboard too.
        

SIGNUPS         top

      - Delete accounts of things you no longer use.
      - Every time you signup for anything, spend a couple of extra minutes going through
        their privacy settings and disabling any sort of data collection.
      - Depending on yours and the companies' locations, they *may* be required to have
        certain opt-outs.
      - Check your devices' settings for these opt-outs too.
      - You can use free tools like Mozilla Monitor, Mine, Optery, or paid ones like
        Incogni for data removal requests (none of these work well).
        

MISC         top

      - Use a password manager.
      - Use a separate authenticator app for 2FA, (in case you were to ever get locked out
        of the password manager).
      - Do not buy an 8 sleep mattress.
        

WHY CARE         top

      - Governments like your data, and your data will only ever be used against you.
        See UK, US, India.
      - Once your data has been collected, it *will* be breached.
      - Filing deletion requests will, at best, erase some of it from some basic,
        particularly visible kinda places. Just blocking some advertisers is all you can
        do.
      - It will stay forever in the archives of random osint researchers or scammers or
        governments or hacking groups or something.