Ultimately, asking for a simple guide to privacy is like asking for a simple guide to safety. It's a broad category, and different people have different needs. Certain parts are simple (privacy: avoid interaction with big tech, safety: don't leave a fire unattended) but many elements are either unnecessary (windows privacy-supporting software for someone who only uses an iphone, flotation devices in the Sahara) or necessarily complex. (data hygiene procedures, having the correct type of fire extinguisher) There is no prebuilt 'Privacy Guide for Darkguyman's situation.'
this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
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May I suggest my free book DISENGAGE: Opting Out—and Finding New Options—to Reclaim Your Life from Spammers, Scammers, Intrusive Marketers and Big Tech?
I recommend the PDF because it has clear "try this now" actions and other sidebars. It's written in a Dummies style (I used to write Dummies books and Idiot's Guides. :)
- Pick one user downloaded app from your device.
- Check it has a libre software license text file, like GPL, to check we control it.
- If not, remove it (optional: replace it).
- Repeat the above for every other app.
This makes privacy easy, stopping apps blocking our privacy, by putting us in control.
You did not say which part of those guides is the issue, so here is the most simple and important part.
Some simple things to look into:
- Change your DNS resolver on all devices to something privacy friendly
- Use a search engine with less tracking
- Ublock, Privacy Badger etc for browser extensions
- Firefox with disabled tracking (look into forks like Librewolf)
- Change your keyboard on your phone to something local with no tracking (FUTO Keyboard)
- This for Windows, just use normal settings if you dont know what you're doing
- Install Fdroid for open source apps. Many privacy friendly options.
- Look into how to disable telemitry on all the devices you use. Some of the above will already help you with that.
And in general, try to use services from the EU, as its privacy laws are much stronger than other alternatives.
Good luck, let me know if you need something more advanced.
This is a good one to start with. You can download it for free.
Note: I am not the author of this
What are your needs ? What are the services/software you want to ditch ? What are the threats you want to protect from ?
There is no universal privacy guides.
Is there no general simple guide? I mean the above ones are definitely all-rounders. Not perfect but sort of a peek at privacy.
You didn' aswer my questions. We can not help with such wide request.
The ones you mentioned are the simple guides.
Are they asking for a guide that does not work, a fake guide? That would be simple.
Short answer: no
Longer answers start asking questions and people here can address them in bite sized format.
But bigger picture who are you trying to deny your data and how much is u willing to suffer for it.
Once you figure that out you start implementing practices and software to provide you with desirable outcome at that's still usable.
@darkguyman I am extremely curious what part of my website is "too advanced/complex." My goal is to make privacy approachable to even the most non-technical user, so this indicates I might be missing the mark. If you have detailed feedback on how I can improve, I would be very grateful.
I'm not really sure what you're looking for here. You say you're looking for something open source, simple and secure, but... what? The guide itself should be open source and secure? Or are you looking for a 'threat model', as privacy enthusiasts call it, or individual tools, or a list of tools?
We put together a privacy guide with different tiers of inconvenience, which you may or may not find helpful:
You can always ask online community here or on other platforms since they can provide you with exactly what you want.