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In today’s hyper-connected world,
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our right to control our own information is
often stripped away without our knowledge.
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They're inside your browser
usually or your mobile device,
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yes. And you haven't necessarily invited
them in? You have not invited them in.
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Companies, data brokers,
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and governments collect vast amounts of
data about us—more than we might imagine.
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These third parties will collect your click
stream as you click from site to site to site,
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to see what you may be reading,
what you may be interested in.
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But the good news is that
we can take back control.
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Privacy isn’t about hiding—it’s about the right
to decide for ourselves who gets our data.
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And I’ve seen so many people waking up
to this reality -- pushing back against
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surveillance apologists, and deciding to
reclaim control of their digital lives.
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But a lot of people just don’t know
where to begin, or what, exactly, to do.
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So this video is a privacy 101 guide for those
of you who are just getting started. Basically,
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if you’re overwhelmed by the prospect
of reclaiming your online privacy,
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don’t be. Every small step you take makes
a big difference. We’re going to start
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with the lowest hanging fruit -- what
I consider 6 of the easiest things that
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you can do right now that will have
a big impact on your daily privacy.
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These low hanging fruit are: browser, search
engine, messaging app, email, calendar, and VPN.
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“A perfectly normal fresh delicious strawberry!”
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The aim isn’t to tell people what to
install. Every individual is going
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to know best what they value most from a platform,
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So that's why we have a ton of other videos
doing deep dives on all of these topics,
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looking at a wide variety of
products and their tradeoffs.
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In this video I give a few examples of specific
platforms and tools that I personally use, but I
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highly recommend that you explore your options so
you can make an informed decision. And if you have
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recommendations for tools that we didn’t mention,
please share them with others in the comments.
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Let’s start with what I think
is probably the easiest thing to
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switch out in your life, and that’s your browser.
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Your browser is your gateway to the
internet. It does highly sensitive work,
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it sees highly personal information, and it’s
a huge privacy leak in most people’s lives.
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Chrome browser has the largest market share of
any browser, and they track your every move.
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The good news is that switching to a
privacy-focused browser is really easy,
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and if you take this step you’re doing
better than 80% of the people out there.
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How do you choose a good browser?
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There’s a website I recommend called
privacytests.org, where they look at
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all kinds of different tracking that browsers
can do, and see how these browsers compare.
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Brave, Mullvad, and Librewolf all
seem to stand out on the list.
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Next, I recommend that you set this
new browser as your default browser.
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On Brave for example you’d click the Brave
dropdown menu at the top of your screen,
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select settings, and it will be one of
the options on the “get started” page.
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Then, to make your transition
easier you can actually import
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all of your old bookmarks from your old browser.
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If you’re using Chrome, first you’d click
on the three-dots on the top right corner.
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Go to bookmarks, and select "bookmark
manager". Once in the bookmark manager,
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click the 3 dots in the top right corner again,
and this time select "export bookmarks”. Choose
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where you want to save your file, and
click “save”. This will export your
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bookmarks as an HTML file. Then in your new
privacy browser, you can import that file.
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If you’re on Brave you’d go to your bookmark
manager, click on the 3 dots on the top right
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corner, select “import bookmarks” and then
select the HTML file you just downloaded.
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Now one point of tension leaving your old
browser might be that it automatically logs
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you into your favorite sites, and you
don’t want to lose that convenience.
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Well, you can have that same convenience
with your new browser too. So the final
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step you might want to consider
is importing any saved passwords.
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In your old browser, you’ll
first export your passwords.
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If you’re using Chrome, you want to open
your password manager. You’ll either find
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this by clicking on your profile picture or the
three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner,
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then selecting the key icon, which
is Chrome’s password manager,
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Or you’ll find it under “settings”, then
”auto-fill”, then by clicking ”password manager”.
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But however you get there, once
you’re inside “password manager”,
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click “settings”, then click "export passwords".
You’ll download a CSV file with your passwords.
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Keep in mind, this file stores
your passwords in plain text,
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so you want to keep it somewhere really safe
or consider deleting it once you’re done.
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Now you’ll simply import these
passwords into your new browser.
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If you use Brave, go to “settings”,
select “auto filling and passwords”,
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then click on “passwords”. Select your
saved CSV file and click “import”.
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If you use a password manager instead
of storing them in the browser,
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you can install your password manager
of choice, then you can import your
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passwords directly into the
password manager instead.
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So let’s quickly recap because that seems
like a lot more steps than it actually is:
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Download new privacy preserving browser. Stop
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using browsers like Chrome and Edge
that are terrible for your privacy.
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And that’s it! That’s the first super easy
task you take to really improve your privacy!
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Now, what are some other easy wins?
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Let’s move on to number 2, your search engine.
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What’s the difference between
a browser and a search engine?
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Well, think of your browser like a car that
takes you to the internet and lets you drive
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around in it. And think of your search engine
like the road map you’re using to navigate.
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A search engine essentially makes an index
of the things out there on the internet,
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to help you search through it all
and find what you’re looking for.
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The most widely used search engine
is Google search. 90% of people use
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it. You probably use it. But
it’s horrendous for privacy.
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Not only is it building a detailed profile
of your interests, habits, medical concerns,
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or anything else you search for, it’s also
immediately logging your keystrokes when
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you use it, and sending them to Google,
regardless of whether you actually hit the
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search button or not. That’s how they give you
“predictive text” suggestions for your searches.
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They create these profiles on you
because you are their product,
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and they sell your attention to basically
anyone who is willing to pay for it.
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When you use the Chrome browser,
Firefox browser, or Safari browser,
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or countless others, your default search
engine in the browser is Google search. So
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that means when you type a query into the
URL bar, that’s Google that you’re using.
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So a super easy privacy win is
just to change search engines.
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If you already swapped out your browser to one
of the privacy-focused ones I mentioned before,
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they actually don’t use Google search by default,
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they use more privacy-focused search
engines in their URL bar instead.
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For example Brave uses Brave Search,
which is my search engine of choice,
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and Mullvad and Librewolf both use DuckDuckGo.
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Regardless of the browser you use,
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you can change your default search engine
to one that is more privacy-friendly.
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There are a bunch of other engines you can
try out; see which gets you the best results.
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One final tip with search engines: once you’ve
chosen which search engine is going to be your
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default search engine in the URL bar, you can also
set up a secondary choice with this little trick.
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Make the home screen that your browser
first opens to be your secondary option,
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so that every time you open a new window it
takes you to that search engine homepage.
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For example I use Brave in the
URL bar, but can set my browser
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to open on a different search engine, so
I have both options immediately available.
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If you switch out your search engine
to use something other than Google,
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you’re doing better than 90% of people.
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The next step on your privacy journey
is securing your communication,
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starting with your text messages and phone calls.
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SMS and regular phone calls are not private.
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Almost every country in the world has mandated
lawful access laws, where governments require
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backdoors in telecommunication channels to
allow them to intercept calls and messages.
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Unfortunately, as with all backdoors, they’re
never limited to their intended purpose.
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In 2024, it was discovered that
the Chinese used the American
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government’s own backdoors to gain
full access to US communications,
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allowing the Chinese to geolocate millions
of Americans and record phone calls at will.
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You should switch to a private messaging
app to better protect your communication.
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These apps don't rely on insecure telecom
channels. Instead, they encrypt your messages,
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end-to-end, and send them over the
internet. If they’re ever intercepted,
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only you and your recipient would
be able to actually read them.
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But not all private messaging apps are created
equal. You’ve almost surely heard of some of
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the most popular ones like Whatsapp and
iMessage. While the content of these
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communications is protected, which makes them
far better than SMS and normal phone calls,
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Facebook and Apple, respectively,
still get a lot of your data.
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There are more private apps that you can
use, and Signal is probably my favorite.
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They take awesome care to really minimize
the amount of data that they collect,
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to the point that they don’t even have
information to hand to governments when asked.
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Even the way they handle stickers
and gifs is privacy-preserving.
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You can use any VOIP number to sign up,
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and you can keep your number
private from others on the platform.
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It would be better if account management wasn’t
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tied to a number at all, but as
far as private messaging apps go,
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it’s really simple to use and the one I’ve
had the most success converting people to.
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And It’s far more popular than people realize,
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so you’ll probably find that some of
your contacts are already on there.
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But there are other private
messaging apps you can try out too.
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Take a look at securemessagingapps.com
for an overview of what’s out there.
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If you have trouble converting people to
the private messaging app of your choice,
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we made a video with some helpful tips for
convincing your friends and family to ditch SMS.
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“You Can Do It!!”
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The next part of your private
communications to tackle is your email.
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Free email services like Gmail scan and
analyze your inbox to build comprehensive
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profiles on you. There are privacy-focused
email providers like Protonmail and Tuta,
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that end-to-end encrypt your messages in-network,
use zero access encryption for emails at rest
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which means that emails sent from other providers
to your inbox are also out of their reach,
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and offer password protected emails so that if
you have to send an email to Gmail or Microsoft,
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you can protect your communication
from those companies’ prying eyes too.
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Changing your email can seem
like a really big change to make,
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but it’s way easier than you probably realize.
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In Protonmail, for example, you can import
your entire Gmail history with a single click.
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You can also import your
contact list at the same time,
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so that you don’t lose them in the transition.
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Once your emails are in your new
Protonmail account, for example,
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you can forward all future Gmail messages
to your new inbox, and then you can respond
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from your Proton address, gradually
moving people over to your new system.
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It’s also super easy to set up
custom domains in Protonmail.
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This means that you can have a professional
work email like contact@mywebsite.com,
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but under the hood you’re using a super
private email provider like Protonmail.
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Switching your calendar is another one
of the super easy low-hanging fruits
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that you can start with on your privacy journey.
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Your calendar is intensely personal. It
contains every medical appointment you’ve had,
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every birthday of those you know, your daily
habits, addresses you visit. Every future plan.
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For most people, these are handed
straight over to Google and Apple.
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But there are private calendars you can use
instead, such as those from Proton or Tuta.
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Tuta’s calendar is new but promising.
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Proton’s has been around for awhile, and
the process is crazy simple. You can import
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your entire calendar of past and future
appointments with a single click. They’re
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instantly transported to your new end to end
encrypted provider, where they’re now private.
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This is a huge and easy win for your
privacy, and you’ll never look back.
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The final easy privacy switch
that you can make is using a VPN.
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A VPN encrypts your internet
traffic leaving your device,
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which isn’t so important these days because
basically everything we do online uses HTTPS,
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which also encrypts your traffic in transit.
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But what a VPN also does is hide
your IP address so that you’re
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not handing it over to every website you visit.
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This is important, because your IP address
can help people find your physical location,
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and it can also allow websites and data
brokers to more easily build profiles on you.
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With a VPN, websites instead
see your VPN’s IP address,
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adding an additional privacy
layer to your activities.
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A really important caveat, though, is that the
VPN industry is really shady and you have to be
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very careful which VPN you use, and trust that
they’re not just collecting and selling your
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data themselves. Reputable companies like Mullvad
and Proton are highly regarded options for VPNs.
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Reclaiming your privacy isn’t just
about protecting yourself—it’s about
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your right to choose. You don’t have to give
all your information to thousands of entities,
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and lose control over what happens to that
information and how it’s used. There are so many
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amazing privacy tools that you can start using
today to take back control of your digital life.
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Don’t be overwhelmed, if you even
start with one thing on this list,
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you will have made a big impact on your privacy.
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The digital age can sometimes feel like
too much to deal with, but you are far
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more empowered and capable than you realize,
and it feels really good to start reclaiming
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control over your digital life. Your privacy
is worth protecting. It’s time to take it back.
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NBTV is a project of the Ludlow Institute,
a non-profit that researches and educates
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about the latest in tech privacy. Help
us educate people about how to reclaim
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their privacy and autonomy in the digital age.
Visit nbtv.media/support to set up a monthly,
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work, and you look cool doing it! This is from our
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00:14:07
I’m not here. Seriously.
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