This is a collection of my most used privacy tools and services. I have not been paid or sponsored by any of them.
Firefox
Official site: https://www.mozilla.org/
Firefox has always been a great alternative to Chrome for privacy purposes. Firefox is, in my opinion, the only real alternative to Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. Sure there’s also Safari but the support for extensions is butchered. If I can’t install uBlock Origin on a browser, I don’t use it.
uBlock Origin
Official site:: https://ublockorigin.com/
uBlock Origin is probably the best adblocker out there. I debated adding it to my list because I thought it was the norm to install an adblocker but I’ve come across so many people that, for whatever reason, do not use any sort of adblocker.
If you use a browser (aside from Safari) and you don’t have this extension installed…what are you doin’??
Tor
Official site: https://www.torproject.org/
If you really care about privacy to the point where you want to be anonymous, use Tor. When using Tor, your connection goes through several Tor servers that encrypt connections multiple times along the way. This way, your connection is difficult to trace and decrypt. Tor is widely used by journalists, whistleblowers, and activists to remain safe from government surveillance and punishment. This is just the gist of it, feel free to read more details on the official site about how it works.
Signal
Official site: https://signal.org/
Signal is a cross-platform messaging app. If you’ve ever used iMessage on Apple devices, then it’ll feel familiar, except Signal is not exclusive to Apple hardware. Signal is free, open source, end-to-end encrypted, and peer-reviewed. It’s used by privacy advocates around the world.
It has all the essential features that you’d expect from a modern messaging application like sending photos/videos, calls, video chat, stickers.
Mullvad VPN
Official site: https://mullvad.net/en/
Mullvad VPN does not log any activity (and has been audited to prove it), and is pretty afforable. I know many people out there opt to use free VPNs, but there’s a 99% chance they’re selling your information to marketing companies. It’s much better to pay for a VPN.
The source code for the Mullvad client applications is open-source.
Mullvad even encourages you to remain as anonymous as possible when buying their service. You don’t need an email to sign up and you can pay with Bitcoin.
Mullvad VPN is based in Sweden, which has generally good privacy laws.
Proton VPN
Official site: https://protonvpn.com/
I eventually switched to Proton VPN since I bought their subscription suite that includes email and cloud storage. My experience with Proton VPN has been very positive and it’s just as good as Mullvad from what I can tell. Proton VPN (and the rest of their services) are based in Switzerland which has good privacy laws.
Proton Mail
Official site: https://protonmail.com/
Proton Mail is an email service based in Switzerland. Your emails are encrypted and aren’t used for training AI or selling advertisements to you.
The UI/UX isn’t as great as something like GMail but I think it’s worth the trade-off. They also support bringing in your own domain to use for emailing.
You can create a free account to try it out.
Little Snitch
Official site: https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
Little Snitch is a macOS-only application firewall that runs on your Mac and monitors all incoming and outgoing connections. It allows you to allow or deny connections as needed and gives you plenty of information about what your applications are connecting to. There’s also curated blocklists you can add to Little Snitch to block things like ads on your entire machine.
This is a paid app (and there’s a free trial), but I think it’s worth it.
If you want a free alternative, check out LuLu. It has less features, but it’s worth a try if you want to see what your machine is connecting to. The same developer has other Mac-related applications that may be useful: objective-see.com.
Further Research
These are my favorite tools and services, but there are many, many others out there. If you want to claim back more of your privacy, start by reading through privacyguides.org.
I’ve also learned a lot about privacy in these subreddits: