You have first to be the most degoogled you can, you have to abandoned the most of the big companies services as google, Facebook… Delete Instagram, do not use WhatsApp and Messenger, watch YouTube through Piped or Individious, uninstall bloatware on your phone (maybe install a custom rom, like /e/ os, a go-to for privacy). Be aware of what you post and your personal identity. The only case when VPNs are the first thing to do is when you have to spoof your IP because of restrictions or any others…

Separate web browser or browser profile with no logins, just uBO medium mode, and no Big Tech bullshit. This means any Chromium browser is ruled out.

First big step I took was going through all my emails and deleting inactive accounts/making deletion requests. It was a major hassle but made me feel a lot more secure about my email and digital footprint. Plus built a real basic understanding about taking a more minimalist approach to the internet, suddenly I wasn’t getting emails every hour and random notifications, it was nice.

Other then that ublock origin and your password manager of choice that hopefully isn’t attached to the browser, oh and 2fa

Have a web browser that isn’t logged into any services for general web browsing. Mullvad browser is a good choice. Make it your default browser for any links that get randomly clicked.

The benefit here is your not carrying around a bunch of active cookies for the sites you log into. It makes logging into a site a deliberate choice. No history builds up of random links, browsing, searching.

A browsing only web browser plus a VPN is a really good start at cleaning up your digital footprint by making it more intentional.

I recommend mullvad VPN, and mullvad browser… but any combination is fine.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/why-privacy-matters/ Privacy guides is a excellent resource with writeups, FAQs, and … Guides to help you in your journey

It really depends on what you want to be private and who you don’t want seeing it. If you are torrenting pirated movies a VPN is great for privacy. What are her main worries about privacy?

The first major step is a tracker and ad blocker (DNS based, software or even both) a VPN could help with this since some do offer to block trackers and ads. Everything else is pretty secondary imo and depends on your threat model

Nobody mentioned JShelter yet. It may not make browser fingerprinting impossible, but it’s the easiest way to make it harder. It’s easy to use, just turn it down for any sites that it breaks which you’d prefer to be not broken.

Also, use firefox and clear out all your cookies and site data regularly. Make exceptions for sites you actually want to identify yourself to. Noscript is another thing to consider, though I haven’t used it recently myself. Use Tor Browser if there’s something you want a little more privacy than usual for.

True! Lots of wonderful comments here.

Just my two cents here to mention that it’s necessary to see this as a journey and a mindset, not a single-step or one-size-fits-all panacea.

If she’s annoyed of advertisements creeping up, introduce her to adblockers and slowly make her get used to it. If she has shared concerns after seeing her friends or colleagues receive abusive comments on their social media accounts, comment on the dangers of oversharing one’s private life and its potential consequences and tangible threats, like medical insurance companies abusing the info, and so on.

I think you and your girlfriend should read about “threat modeling”. You need to figure out what you and her are trying to keep private and from whom. Without knowing that, its impossible to say if a VPN is a good solution.

For example if she is trying to hide her web traffic from her ISP then a VPN is a great solution, if she is trying to be annoymous on the web then a VPN won’t do much as you are still easily fingerprintable amongst other things.

People all to often act like privacy is some sort of list of sub items that you can check off like completing a quest in a MMO.

Each individual’s privacy goals are different, privacy is not a one size fits all problem or solution. Your girlfriends needs may be drastically different then your own.

Here are some things you can do, roughly ranked:

• Use a password manager
• Assume anything you post/do online/financially can and will be used to build an advertising profile on you/train AI/be shared with government authorities
• Disable ad personalization/history/sharing of information via privacy settings of mobile phone, mobile apps, Google, Facebook, banks, credit cards, ISP, cellular service, everything
• Turn off third-party cookies.
• Use an ad-blocker on desktop and mobile. They also help prevent a lot of tracking.
• Don’t use Chrome. Consider Firefox/Brave/whatever else
• Avoid using ad-supported services/companies. Consider using paid alternatives. This means using alternatives to Google Search, GMail, Facebook for photos, etc etc.
• Use a profile deleting service like https://monitor.mozilla.org/
• Different browser profiles: general use, Facebook, personal (GMail / Google Docs), and maybe more
• Use a VPN w/ secured DNS
• Many Google accounts: one for general, YouTube, Google Docs/personal, and maybe more
• Use a different email address to sign up for every account. I use StartMail’s aliases
• Don’t use your personal phone number for most things (finance/healthcare excepted). Get another number via a call and SMS forwarding service

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I’m also going to add that any online service you sign up for, always check through their privacy settings and make sure the options to not gather data are enabled. Another one is to check through settings for your ISP and cellular plans. Some collect various data to “enhance” services. Lastly I’ll mention that on mobile devices switch to a privacy oriented browser like the recommendations below, and use Progressive Web Apps instead of native apps. These will include the browser’s privacy protections by default.

Switch your browser (Firefox or Librewolf) and use uBlock Origin. Tweak settings for privacy and security (check the guide on /c/piracy). Use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. Remove personal details from social media, especially anything public-facing.

Both of you make valid points. The trouble is that the Internet is getting more complicated and also getting more exploited by corporations, e.g. with the recent addition of the A.I. hype. And all kind of people think that they know the answer but later it turns out that they were wrong (Take for example all the Apple fans years ago thinking that Apple + privacy was a really good way of life). The other trouble is that maybe only a few VPN providers are really trustworthy. And then your browser fingerprint can be unique if you add too many extensions or fiddle with certain settings, which means you are track-able and user profiles can be created. And so on and so forth.

It makes sense to think about what you want to protect and avoid. Here some generic suggestion :

• Get yourself a pi-hole at home for your devices to connect to.
• Limit the amount of Java-Script in your web browsers. Lots of websites will do fine.
• Limit the amount of phone apps usage (like you wrote)
• Use Tor browser (slow) or Mullvad VPN in some cases you want to hide your IP address
• Be weary about default settings of Firefox, take a look at LibreWolf
• Use different browsers for different tasks