A guest post from the ProtonMail Blog

Written by Ben Wolford • Find the original posting here

Updated July 2019

Improve your online privacy with this comprehensive guide, developed by the ProtonMail team. Here, we’ll help you determine your threat model and take steps to achieve online privacy that meets your needs.

Total Internet privacy is impossible, but you can get close by adjusting your online behavior — and a few of your privacy settings. This guide is designed to help you with simple, practical solutions to keep prying eyes away from your personal information.

Many Internet privacy guides promote unrealistic solutions, like using Tor all the time (which will slow your Internet) or communicating only through Signal encrypted messenger (which is useless unless your contacts are using it too). While such technologies provide a high level of privacy, they may not be necessary under your personal threat model. In other words, you probably don’t need to take the same privacy precautions as a Turkish dissident or an NSA whistleblower. And the best privacy recommendations can be counterproductive if you burn out following them, like one writer for Slate did.

So, in this guide to Internet privacy, we’ll show you how to understand your own threat model, followed by some practical steps you can take. Each of the sections has a simple recommendation you can follow to increase your online privacy. This page is designed to be a handy, ongoing resource rather than a quick checklist, so consider bookmarking this page to come back to it later when you need a refresher.

Continue reading → The ProtonMail guide to taking control of your online privacy