For me, DuckDuckGo and 1password are my two favorites, and Redact of course!
A few privacy tools I always keep around
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Bitwarden: password manager is still the biggest “privacy ROI” move IMO, especially if you turn on 2FA everywhere.
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Signal: boring answer, but it’s the one I actually trust for everyday messagingg.
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Mullvad VPN: simple, consistent, no weird upsells, and good for basic network privacy.
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uBlock Origin: the “install it and forget it” browser add on that immediately cuts tracking and a lot of junk.
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Firefox + containers: keeps logins and trackers from bleeding across sites.
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SimpleLogin (or Proton Pass aliases): email aliases are underrated, it stops your real inbox from getting sprayed everywhere.
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NextDNS easy way to reduce tracking across the whole device/network without tinkering too much.
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2FAS / Aegis (Android) or Ente Auth: I like separate authenticator apps instead of SMS codes.
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* Ente Photos: for people trying to get away from “everything in one Google bucket.”
Curious what everyone uses for their digital EDC
Find my device goes on everything I own, it’s usually the first thing I install. Luckily I have not had to use it yet, but I will be ready when the time comes…if it comes.
Never give your credit card out again to anyone or any website. It’s bad ass.
Portmaster is per-app network control plus monitoring with privacy-oriented defaults. Great for spotting noisy apps and blocking them without breaking everything else. Love it and highly reccommend.
Amazing app I love it and it’s on every computer I own, including all our mobile devices
mysudo and multi-login for creating different personas online. you can login to diifferent “personas” for different things. you can see all your own custom computer footprints and full proxy useage. both are very good apps.
Multi-login is great.
I also use https://www.textverified.com/ which allows you to use other people’s phone number to verify accounts, and it’s cheap. So for example, you want to signup to a sports betting site or a new email service or whatever but you don’t want to use your real number, you can pay like 50 cents and use someone elses number. I use this service on a weekly basis.
not really an app, but a anonymous google search start page.
oh also brave, the best browser for privacy imo https://brave.com/
email - proton mail
instant messaging - signal
search engine - DDG
VPN - Surf Shark
Proton Authenticator is fantastic
Bitwarden for me, can’t go wrong!
what do you guys like for private browsing? plugins or apps recommendations?
ublock origin is hot fiya
Late to the party but figured I’d throw in a couple more…
https://f-droid.org is the first thing I install on any Android device after find my device. Open source app store, wayyy less tracking than the Play Store, and most of the privacy apps people are mentioning here have F-Droid versions.
@tank for the browser question, I’ve been on https://librewolf.net for a while. pretty much Firefox with the privacy settings already cranked up out of the box, so you don’t have to fiddle with about:config to get to a sane baseline. Mullvad Browser is another solid one if you want something even more locked down.
Cheers, LibreWolf is news to me. Setting it up this weekend. The about:config tweaking is exactly what I was trying to avoid. TY!@!
librewolf for the win. been my daily for months, no complaints
Speaking as a parent whose kid uses Discord, I’ll tell you what I can see and what I can’t, because the kids never believe me when I tell them. With Discord’s Family Center thing turned on (which my daughter actually agreed to in exchange for her phone privileges, hell of a negotiation that was), I can see who she’s been messaging recently and which servers she joined. I cannot see what she actually wrote or what was said to her. I get a list of usernames, that’s it.
Without something like that turned on, the only way I’d know anything is if I had her phone unlocked in front of me, or if I’d installed actual monitoring software, which I haven’t because I’m not trying to be the FBI in my own house.
I think your mom asking who you’re messaging is almost certainly her just being a curious mom and not her seeing anything. If she had monitoring software you’d probably have noticed something weird on your phone by now, you know?