I'll add that baby steps is better than no steps.

Better to start slow, get used to the flow and improve over time than to get overwhelmed and annoyed and give up.

If your step 1 is just being aware of and tweaking privacy settings for every app you use, and turning off Bluetooth and location when not in use, then good.

If your step one is to implement a full stack right away, and go live in the mountains, also good.

Another good concept to read about is threat models. Everyone's threat model is different. You have celebrities, you have CEOs, you have Snowden, you have regular Joes, activists, parents, etc. each with their own needs.

Privacy often comes at the cost of convenience, though this improves over time as the tools improve.

Assess your threat model first.

I see so many instances in the privacy space where someone asks for help and everyone piles on aggressively opinionated. Don't let that discourage you and just keep in mind your threat model. In truth we can all point you in the right directions but we can't "prescribe" you a stack without knowing your threat model. And you probably shouldn't tell us :P

Others have given good suggestions. I like to tell new folks to bookmark Privacy Guides. As far as I remember they have some good reading on privacy concepts and suggestions for tools, browsers, apps and reasoning behind them.

With that said, I like to use:

My setup isn't perfect, but it suits my current threat model fine. I still use Windows along with Ubuntu on desktops. I still have some big brother apps, but more limited and contained on GrapheneOS.

I've become a fan of "identity segregation" because of my tendencies for obssessing about details and OPSEC. I must've reinstalled all my OS a handful of times before settling for my current setup and realising that it makes the most sense to me with a balance between privacy+security and convenience when required to stay productive. e.g. I'm ok with some big brother apps to keep in touch with some friends and family especially, but I don't carry them with me and use them in a separate dumb chromium browser I don't use for anything else. If the situation in life or the world changes, threat model will be reassessed as needed.

Cheers and best of luck on your privacy endaevors!

For starters, bare minumum:

email - protonmail use aliases for public emails desktop OS - Debian browser - LibreWolf with minimal extensions PiHole on your home network to filter ads and tracers local app for many things - umbrel beind tor for your BTC node and electron and mempool phone - GrapheneOS compatible phone (newer pixels), You will get kick out of reboot sequence when it shows google logo and then "nope, I changed my mind, load Graphene" lol You will learn as you go, tons of stuff out there if you are willing to do some work

Tor and e2e encrypted communication tools. From the things that don’t exist (or I don’t know about), completely anonymous phones, which are “invisible” to mobile operators (every phone has its IMEI recorded on the network).

Not a tech suggestion but perhaps a useful tip: Operate on the internet with the assumption that EVERYTHING is spying on you. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want the whole world to know, even in DMs or e2e messengers that market themselves as secure, assume they’re compromised.

I’m sure everyone here already operates like this but just a friendly reminder :)

We need to group together and bring people over to our cause. Individually, we can do a lot. Together we can. As they say, "Preoccupied with a single tree, you'll miss the entire forest."

I have nothing bad to say about Proton, but if we are under a scenario where entire sites are being blocked, you need a self-hosted option. NextCloud is a good starting point because it is free and open source software, self-hostable, and you can integrate with cloud services like Sendgrid for deliverability plus fallback to your own delivery systems if your provider gets shut out

I also think that it is essential to strengthen our privacy and keep our data safe... it would be a little difficult to make mobile phones anonymous... but I think it is a good idea... I personally in my marketing study group use an application called Briar that can connect via Bluetooth between nearby phones or in the same area and there we manage all our data and conversations... that way we are a little safer and our information is safer!!

A VPN paid in bitcoin like iVPN or Mulvad.

A password manager like keepass or bitwarden.

Transparent blockchains expose you.

I think it is key we do everything we can to use privacy-enhancing features. I would like to move away from Apple/Android, I don't know the best solution as of right now.

We should use GrapheneOS