**Disclaimer: I am not at all an expert in this field. This is not meant at all to be a comprehensive guide to Internet Safety or OpSec, but just a primer to help you get started. If you are a technology person who happens to know more or has any corrections, please, comment below and I will edit my main post.**
Hey, guys! I first have one question - how secure do you want your system to be? This is a problem found all around the world. You can make a system that no one can crack, but is so rigid, hard to operate, and locked-down that it's barely usable. So, like most things, you have to find a balance. Some of these are more of a pain to implement than others, that's the nature of the beast. I hope you at least take away something that you employ. This may be a mess, and I will probably update it overtime and as it gets more polished link it in the sidebar.
**1) Delete your social media.** There's two options with this. You can just delete your account, sure. You'll cut out a huge portion of ads from your life, among all the other positive things that come from deleting it. But, things like Facebook (I'm not sure about Twitter) and Youtube still track your location and send data, even after doing so. You can't even delete it off of your phone in some cases. So, if you want to go the extra mile to fully remove these apps from your phone (after deleting your account, along with any personal info you have in the 'account' section) you can...
**2) Root your phone.** I am unsure if iOS has a similar thing as to this, so I'm sorry to be ignorant. Please root your phone, if you are even a little tech savvy, do some research and get it done. It will give you much more control over your phone and is very refreshing. This helps you get rid of all of that nasty Google bloatware, which also helps you...
**3) /r/degoogle your life.** There are plenty of better ways to communicate in this world. Don't buy a fucking Alexa, or google home, or whatever they're calling it lol. Use ProtonMail for E-mail, just to be safe use a PGP Encryption if you don't trust it. Check out that subs sidebar for things like better SMS ( I think Signal is cool! https://www.deepdotweb.com/2016/07/07/heres-tips-using-signal-safely-possible/), IM (is gabber still a thing, I think it was called), calendars, reminders, notes, keyboards, etc etc. Use DuckDuckGo as your search provider. Use Brave as a regular browser with security set to high (especially turning JavaScript off), or if you'd like...
**4) Download FireFox and use Tor.** I'm sure a lot of you have heard about tor, or the dark web, or whatever, but tor is good at what it does. In fact, I personally recommend, especially if you live in a place with an oppressive regime or do illegal things online, download /r/tails and learn how to use it well. https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarketsNoobs/wiki/bible/buyer here is a pretty good explanation of Tails and/or whonix, granted, this website is for sketchy purposes, we can use these to our advantage to be safe. I personally don't believe in the "I have nothing to hide, so I don't need privacy." Tails will leave no trace of itself on your computer, all you need is two 8gb thumb drives. It has every app you would need on it, runs through the tor network, you can save some essential settings such as programs or bitcoin addresses. I highly recommend it, if not, maybe at least...
**5) Get off of windows or MacOS.** Switch to some Linux kernel. Windows has so many back doors into it, Mac as well, and it gives you nearly no control of your machine. If you're not that computer savvy, maybe google "how to dual boot my computer with Ubuntu" and it will be a good lesson. You'll be able to boot into either your main OS or Ubuntu, a very basic and stable kernel, that way you can just practice on it and learn. I highly recommend making the switch, having complete control allows you to know if some file is ever attempting to make a change or do something weird, which would aid your...
**6) Good anti-virus and firewall.** Find a free one that works for you and doesn't have a slow start up time. Great solution to having issues with the classic computer problems; viruses. Remember, we're not just staying private from the government, we are trying to stay safe of other malicious internet users. Another easy way to protect yourself from a common computer problem is...
**7) Have a strong password.** For accounts and your network. Go to https://random.org and make a string of stuff, long, hard. Bruteforce, dictionary attacks, etc will be thwarted pretty easily this way, and essentially makes it unguessable. Right this PW down. Use a different random password for every account you make. Use 2FA every time it is available. Right all of this down in multiple places, and keep them safe, maybe in a safe! Not in any place that, if you were to get raided, for whatever reason, they would be able to find it reasonably. Along with this, you will have your...
**8) Back-up.** First off, delete whatever you have to with https://www.bleachbit.org/ and you can never beat the old, bash the HDD with the baseball bat trick (you wouldn't have to worry if you used TAILS, as it only stores to RAM, which is deleted when the computer turns off, completely) but then, have a harddrive with a backup on it. Any pertinent information you *need* to keep. If you don't have anything like that, maybe this step is useless. At the least, it's a solid tip that has saved my ass a couple times.
So, those are my main tips. But, here in lies the kicker. It's all an illusion. You can do whatever you want, try as hard as you might, but those that really want to, rest assured, can get into your system. Call it the NSA, the Five Eyes Alliance, JIDF, whatever; they, even if they don't disclose how, can do whatever they want, hardly without anyone noticing. Take the Vault 7 leaks that they have backdoors into most facets of technology, including the processors that power most of the worlds computers, our televisions, smart cars, smart refrigerators, the whole lot, there isn't much we can do. They use audio from other peoples phones to essentially triangulate peoples positions and have a constant map of everyone and everything out there, just through noise. They have us lol. Everything that I said will do a lot for you; it will make you stop being targeted for ads, you will have a lower chance of getting hacked, you will be smarter with computers, you will stop most local LE investigations lol. But, at the end of the day, they see it. In my opinion, and this is confirmed nowhere, except in Whistle blower documentaries and the like, they store everything. Every bit of information that has every been, ever, they have stored and analyzed. This, again, is mostly opinion on my part, so disregard it if you will, but, remember, they will know. So don't murder some high-ranking official and think you could outsmart them, it just won't happen. But, you can become smarter and safer, so I still think it is worth it. Again, anyone with alterations or additions or anything of the sort would be great. Just wanted to help out some of the people in here who maybe didn't know or care about any of this. If you read all of this, thank ya, and I hope you learned something!
