Curated privacy resources for the layperson, by a software developer and computer forensics/infosec grad.
Highlights resources, tools, VPNs, search engines, articles, books, and dark patterns.
Originally hosted on Tumblr and migrated to GitHub in 2015 to make it easier for others to contribute.
- ℹ️ Feedback
- ℹ️ Explanation of the Table Column Titles
- Disclaimer
- General Privacy Tooling Tips
- Privacy Resources
- General News / Info
- Tools
- Opinion and Entertainment
- Donate (A - Z)
- Dark Patterns
The table of contents is generated using gh-md-toc.
Feedback, issues, and pull requests welcome.
- What: The title of the resource.
- Where: The link to the resource. The full URL is shown for transparency and to avoid phishing.
- Why: Why this is recommended as a legitimate tool for privacy.
- Year Added: This is a quick way for you to see if the resource may be outdated, rather than having to use git blame.
The information and products below is for general information purposes only. Any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk.
I am not affiliated with any of the organisations or products below, except where noted.
- Fully open source = peer review, no backdoors.
- Look for fully open source tools, not just opened encryption implementation etc.
- European data protection laws tend to be stronger.
- Watch out for proprietary cores.
- Before trying a new tool, check that it still exists, is secure (depending on your criteria), and has not been bought/taken over by another body which does not uphold high standards for security and privacy.
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| have i been pwned? | https://haveibeenpwned.com/ | "Check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach" | 2017 |
| How to Make a Clean Break With the Clingiest Social Networks | https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-delete-your-facebook-instagram-twitter-snapchat/ | 2018 | |
| Decent Security | http://decentsecurity.com/ | Start somewhere. Start here. | 2017 |
| The Not-Crazy Person’s Guide to Online Privacy | www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/the-not-crazy-person-s-guide-to-online-privacy | 2017 | |
| Crypto Projects that Might not Suck | https://github.com/sweis/crypto-might-not-suck/blob/master/README.md | 2017 | |
| DeleteMe | https://www.abine.com/deleteme/landing.php | Opt out of most people search/public background check sites (@SwiftOnSecurity). | 2017 |
| Beefing up Privacy | https://web.archive.org/web/20170809120204/https://hackernoon.com/beefing-up-privacy-7a749befea32 | Why and how I’ve become more concerned about my privacy. | 2020 |
| Mac user? Tips and tools to help you protect your data and communications. | https://ssd.eff.org/en/playlist/mac-user | 2017 | |
| Famed Hacker Kevin Mitnick Shows You How to Go Invisible Online | https://www.wired.com/2017/02/famed-hacker-kevin-mitnick-shows-go-invisible-online | 2017 | |
| Kids need to reclaim their data and security… especially at school | https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/21/kids-need-to-reclaim-their-data-and-security-especially-at-school/ | 2017 | |
| Adblocking for Internet Explorer without an extension: Enterprise deployment | https://decentsecurity.com/adblocking-for-internet-explorer-deployment/ | Block ads in IE at your company. | 2017 |
| How to Keep Your Internet Browser History Private | http://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-to-keep-your-internet-history-private | 2017 | |
| Request your consumer score and data from Sift | https://web.archive.org/web/20191104102015/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-consumer-score-access.html | 2020 | |
| PrivacyTools | https://www.privacytools.io | "PrivacyTools provides services, tools and knowledge to protect your privacy against global mass surveillance." | 2020 |
| Block List Project | https://github.com/blocklistproject/Lists | "We have lists to block ads, scams, porn, malware, ransomware & more..." | 2024 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Intercept | https://firstlook.org/theintercept/ | 2017 | |
| Tech Worker Handbook | https://techworkerhandbook.org/ | "The Tech Worker Handbook is a collection of resources for tech workers who are looking to make more informed decisions about whether to speak out on issues that are in the public interest. " | 2021 |
| Enemies of the Internet | https://web.archive.org/web/20171124081709/http://surveillance.rsf.org/en/ | 2020 | |
| The 7 Privacy Tools Essential to Making Snowden Documentary CITIZENFOUR | https://web.archive.org/web/20150929213238/http://www.angrysummit.com/the-7-privacy-tools-essential-to-making-snowden-documentary-citizenfour | 2020 | |
| Edward Snowden Explains How To Reclaim Your Privacy | https://theintercept.com/2015/11/12/edward-snowden-explains-how-to-reclaim-your-privacy/ | 2017 | |
| OpenSecrets.org | http://www.opensecrets.org/ | "The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy." | 2017 |
| Vanessa Otero's chart about news sources | https://twitter.com/vlotero/status/808696317174288387 | 2017 | |
| The Markup | https://themarkup.org/ | "The Markup is an American nonprofit organization based in New York City, founded in 2018 with the goal of focusing on data-driven journalism, covering the ethics and impact of technology on society." | 2020 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glaze | https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/what-is-glaze.html | "Glaze is a system designed to protect human artists by disrupting style mimicry." | 2024 |
| Have I Been Trained? | https://haveibeentrained.com/ | Upload an image and check if it's been used to train an AI art model. | 2023 |
| Nightshade | https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html | "Nightshade works similarly as Glaze, but instead of a defense against style mimicry, it is designed as an offense tool to distort feature representations inside generative AI image models." | 2024 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signal | https://signal.org/ | Open source, E2E encryption; desktop, iOS, and Android apps available. Used by Edward Snowden. | 2020 |
| [ |
https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet | "Ricochet is an experimental kind of instant messaging that doesn't trust anyone with your identity, your contact list, or your communications." | 2021 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| ProtonMail | https://protonmail.com/ | "Secure email based in Switzerland" | 2017 |
| Tutanota | https://tutanota.com/ | Open source encrypted mailbox. | 2021 |
| Lavabit | https://lavabit.com/ | Back up with a limited release as of January 2017. | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tor Browser | https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en | 2017 | |
| Brave Browser | https://brave.com/ | "Brave aims to transform the online ad ecosystem with micropayments and a new revenue-sharing solution to give users and publishers a better deal, where fast, safe browsing is the path to a brighter future for the open web." | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTTPS Everywhere | https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere | "HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure." | 2017 |
| Privacy Badger | https://www.eff.org/privacybadger | Blocks spying ads and invisible trackers; open source, created by the EFF. Focuses on privacy instead of solely ad-blocking. | 2017 |
| uBlock Origin (not "uBlock") | https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock | Free and open source ad-blocker. | 2019 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| DuckDuckGo | https://duckduckgo.com/ | The search engine that doesn’t track you. | 2017 |
| StartPage | https://startpage.com/ | The privacy of Ixquick combined with search results from Google. | 2020 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitwarden | https://bitwarden.com/ | Open source password manager. | 2023 |
| KeePassX | https://www.keepassx.org/ | Offline password manager. | 2019 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jitsi Meet | https://meet.jit.si/ | Free open-source video conferencing software for web & mobile; no account needed. | 2023 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tails OS | https://tails.boum.org/ | Portable amnesiac live operating system, aimed at protecting privacy; used by Edward Snowden. | 2017 |
| Qubes OS | https://www.qubes-os.org/ | Uses Security by Compartmentalization approach. | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| PGP | http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/ | Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Murena | https://murena.com/ | "deGoogled and privacy by design smartphones and cloud services." | 2023 |
| Silent Circle | https://silentcircle.com/ | Check out their Silent Phone. | 2023 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepL | https://www.deepl.com/en/translator | An alternative to Google Translate. Based in Europe. | 2023 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| FreeTube | https://freetubeapp.io/ | "FreeTube is a YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux built around using YouTube more privately." | 2024 |
| Invidious | https://invidious.poast.org/ | "An open source alternative front-end to YouTube" | 2024 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| NordVPN | https://nordvpn.com/ | "NordVPN encrypts your internet traffic and hides your IP and physical location. Works on 6 devices at once, on every major platform." | 2020 |
| ProtonVPN | https://protonvpn.com/ | By the creators of ProtonMail. | 2017 |
| That One Privacy Site | https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ | Not a VPN, but a VPN comparison resource. | 2020 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Notes | https://standardnotes.com/ | Standard Notes protects your notes and files with 4x-audited industry-leading end-to-end encryption, meaning only you have access to the keys required to decrypt your information. | 2023 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | https://pi-hole.net/ | "Network-wide ad blocking." | 2021 |
| Quad9 | https://www.quad9.net/ | "An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy." | 2021 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| DISARM Disinformation TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) Framework | https://pi-hole.net/ | "DISARM is a framework designed for describing and understanding disinformation incidents. DISARM is part of work on adapting information security (infosec) practices to help track and counter disinformation and other information harms, and is designed to fit existing infosec practices and tools." | 2023 |
| What | Where | Year Added |
|---|---|---|
| Into the Abyss: The NSA’s Global Internet Surveillance | https://www.aclu.org/infographic/abyss-nsas-global-internet-surveillance | 2017 |
| What | Where | Genre | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry | http://www.aiweiweineversorry.com/ | Documentary | 2017 |
| CITIZENFOUR | https://citizenfourfilm.com/ | Documentary | 2014 |
| What | Author | Where | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What to Do About It | Jennifer Granick | 2020 | |
| Astro Noise: A Survival Guide to Living Under Total Surveillance | Laura Poitras | 2020 | |
| Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World | Bruce Schneier | https://www.schneier.com/books/beyond_fear/ | 2020 |
| Permanent Record | Edward Snowden | 2019 | |
| The Cuckoo's Egg | Cliff Stoll | 2017 | |
| The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy | Violet Blue | https://www.nostarch.com/smartgirlsguide | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) | https://action.aclu.org/secure/donate-to-aclu | ACLU Accomplishments, The Successes of the American Civil Liberties Union | 2020 |
| Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) | https://supporters.eff.org/donate/fcc-privacy-rules-s | Timeline of Electronic Frontier Foundation actions (Wikipedia) | 2020 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Please Make Google AMP Optional | https://www.alexkras.com/please-make-google-amp-optional/ | "I was reading some articles on Hacker News about how we’ve lost the internet to big companies and how we are not doing anything about it and it got me thinking about Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) again." | 2017 |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach | https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election | 2018 | |
| Get your loved ones off Facebook., by SaintSal | http://saintsal.com/facebook/ | ||
| Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook, by Richard Stallman | https://stallman.org/facebook.html | ||
| Facebook patent application describes spying on users through their webcams | https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facebook-spy-webcam-patent-ads/ |
| What | Where | Why | Year Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| WindowsLies / BlockWindows | https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows | "Stop Windows 10 Nagging and Spying. Works with Win7-10" | 2017 |
| Windows 10 Is Spying On You: Here’s How To Stop It | http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-privacy-settings/ | 2017 | |
| Even when told not to, Windows 10 just can’t stop talking to Microsoft | http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/ | 2017 | |
| Microsoft Releases Updates To Spy On Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 Users | http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/ | 2017 | |
| Microsoft retroactively removes ability of companies to turn off Windows Store in Pro version of Windows 10 | https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3135657/can-t-disable-windows-store-in-windows-10-pro-through-group-policy | 2017 |