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Get started now. Free, simple things you can do to better safeguard your privacy.
A lot of privacy guides go into a lot of detail and it can be overwhelming covering all of the caveats and considerations when you want a Day 1 action plan. This is an opinionated guide to get started quickly. I link to additional resources later. Let's start with free and easy changes you can make today.
A Good Password Manager
If you're reusing passwords across sites or using a weak password that's easy for you to remember, that would undermine most of what we're working to solve here.
Personal recommendation
Choose a long, good password for your password manager account, then use the browser plugin and mobile app for that password manager to keep the strong, random passwords for your other accounts.
Good
Avoid
LastPass and password managers bundled with a browser.
Get Better Browsers
Chrome and Edge are full of tracking to enrich Google and Microsoft at the expense of your privacy. Google is an advertising and surveillance company dressed as a tech gadget and software company. Microsoft is legendary for similar behavior.
Apple? No. Safari is a subpar browser that doesn't even have the source code open to public scrutiny. Apple touts it as being good for privacy but every feature it has is available in other browsers. Other browsers which get patched faster and have a better user experience.
Firefox is the best mainstream browser choice but Mozilla is starting to go down that data collection path out of desperation.
Browsers built on the core open source parts of Chrome and Firefox are available though.
Good
Desktop
Librewolf and Mullvad Browser are Firefox-based and reputable.
Chromium is Chrome-based and reputable. Sometimes it's needed for web apps and sites that were designed specifically for Chrome instead of being standards compliant. Flashbacks to Internet Explorer days. I would use it sparingly and favor Librewolf and Mullvad Browser.
Android
Librewolf and Mullvad Browser are not available on mobile. The next best thing is Waterfox. Add the icon to open in private mode, change the setting to open links in private mode by default, and make it the default browser.
GrapheneOS, a degoogled android phone distribution mentioned later, bundles a very good Chromium-based browser named Vanadium. It is a good option if you have it but does not have an option to default to private tabs.
iOS
In the US all iOS browsers still have Safari's rendering at their core even if they are Chrome, Firefox, etc on the outside. Waterfox is not available on iOS so the best case scenario is Firefox Focus.
Avoid
In my opinion, avoid Brave or any similar browser claiming to solve too many problems and bundle too many features.
Avoid browsers directly from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung.
Segment Use Cases
In other words, split up what you do into different browsers.
Think about how you use the web when you're logged into an account with your name attached. Then think about websites you visit without logging in. Keep those in separate browsers as a habit.
Later we'll use VPNs or proxies to keep them in separate locations.
Keep A Clean Desk
Keeping more browser tabs open than you can recall off the top of your head is not privacy-friendly. Many browsers even mark tabs stale to save memory, leading to a tab management headache.
If it's important but you're not going to use it in the next 20 minutes and you don't need to log in again to open it, then just bookmark it and close it.
Set your browser to delete all history and site data when you close the browser. Anything important is bookmarked. Anything that requires a login that you want to open quickly (maybe Bluesky, YouTube, Reddit), add that to the exception list.
Some people choose to put all of their exceptions in one browser and leave the other exception free where it will always delete all site data and history from disk. Other people will sandbox some websites in one browser and other websites in another depending how they think the cookies may interact.
Use Privacy-friendly Frontends for Common Sites
If you're just browsing content without being logged in, might as well use a content proxy frontend.
https://libredirect.github.io/ lists a number of pieces of software that act as intermediaries to make the content available without being exposed to the privacy concerns of connecting to the website directly.
An example of this would be software named Invidious. A site running that software https://inv.nadeko.net acts as a youtube proxy.
Another example of this would be software named Nitter. A site running that software named https://xcancel.com allows you to search tweets.
Sometimes those websites get blocked. To find new ones look through their wiki page for a section listing "instances" of them.
https://libredirect.github.io/ is a good list of the software names but it is not necessary to use the plugin it offers.