Special edition · A practical guide
🛡️ Guarding Your Privacy Online and IRL: Counter-Surveillance and Privacy Tools from the Mundane to Hyper-Vigilance
A practical guide to protecting your own privacy, online and in real life. Step-by-step settings and habits for your phone, accounts, home, car and travels, arranged from five-minute fixes anyone can make to the habits of people with real reasons to fear being tracked, with what each step costs and where the legal lines are.
- 1The Privacy Ladder: Who Is Watching and How Far to GoWho actually collects data about ordinary people, how that data moves from your phone to ad auctions, brokers, government buyers and stalkers, and how to pick the level of protection that fits your life.20 min
- 2Your Phone: How It Leaks and How to Close ItHow your phone knows where you are, how the advertising ID and app SDKs turn that into a product brokers sell, what police tools can pull from a phone, and the iPhone and Android settings that cut the leaks, up to Lockdown Mode, Advanced Protection and hardened phones.22 min
- 3Browsing, Search and Email: How You Are Followed and How to Cut ItHow cookies, embedded trackers, fingerprinting, DNS lookups and email pixels follow you, what your internet provider and even privacy tools can see, what a VPN and Tor actually change, and the settings and tools that cut each leak.22 min
- 4Messaging and CallsWho can read your texts, who can steal your phone number, what your call records reveal even when the words are encrypted, and how to cut each risk down, from free settings to a separate phone.22 min
- 5Data Brokers, Credit and IdentityHow data brokers and people-search sites build a file on you, how breaches feed identity theft and synthetic identities, and what actually shrinks the risk: credit freezes, opt-outs, address control and, for survivors, Idaho's Address Confidentiality Program.22 min
- 6Home and NeighborhoodHow your TV, smart speaker, cameras and router collect and leak data, how police can get camera video, what your own cameras record of your neighbors, and how to cut each risk down.22 min
- 7Out in Public: Plate Readers, Face Scans, Events and ProtestsHow plate reader networks store and share your drives, how store and venue face recognition goes wrong, how a geofence warrant sweeps up every phone near a scene, what changes on protest day, and what each defense does and costs, with the legal lines on plate covers, jammers, camera damage and masks.22 min
- 8Vehicles, Travel and TrackersWhat a connected car records and who has bought it, how rental cars, tolls and loyalty programs build a travel trail, how hidden trackers are used for stalking and how phones now warn about them, and what CBP can do with your devices at the border, with what each defense does and costs.22 min
- 9Hyper-Vigilance: When It Is Worth It and How to Do It RightWho is actually at risk of being tracked and by whom, how stalkerware and shared accounts work, how separate identities get linked back, what being followed looks like, and how Levels 4 and 5 answer each threat, with safety help for survivors and the full ladder with your own plan.24 min