Anonsafe
Start with a few questions, not a list of tools.
Answer honestly. The rest gets clearer from there.
If you have never thought about privacy before, this is a good place to start. You don't need to know anything yet. This page will help you figure out where you are and what makes sense to do first.
It's also okay if something specific brought you here. Either way, take it one step at a time.
Pick a starting point
Where do you recognise yourself?
If you're not sure which one fits, the first card is where most people begin.
Good starting point if you're not sure
Everyday privacy
Your main concern is less tracking, fewer intrusive ads, and safer defaults. You're not planning to overhaul your life, just make some sensible adjustments. This is where most people start, and it's a completely reasonable place to be.
Getting started with privacy →
Going a bit further
You want more meaningful separation between your online activity and who you are. You're open to slightly more friction in exchange for cleaner boundaries and fewer assumptions. This usually starts with understanding how data connects, not just which apps to use.
Understanding threat modeling →
A specific situation
You're a journalist, researcher, activist, or someone managing a clear separation between your real identity and some public-facing work. Simple tool swaps are not enough here. Metadata, how you access things, and your broader habits all matter.
Getting started with privacy →
Starting from the foundations
You'd rather understand how things work before making any decisions. That's a genuinely useful approach. Understanding what encryption does, what metadata is, and how to think about risk makes every choice clearer, and makes you better at evaluating advice you read elsewhere.
What is privacy? →
Optional
Want to think it through more carefully?
These questions can help you work out which path fits before you choose one. You don't have to do this first.
What prompted you to think about this?
Something usually brings people to privacy for the first time. It might be a news story, a conversation, an unsettling ad that seemed to know too much, or just a general feeling that your information is more out there than you'd like.
Knowing your starting point helps you separate what's actually useful right now from what can wait. If a specific event prompted this, that's worth paying attention to. It usually points toward a real concern rather than a general one.
Who or what are you most concerned about?
Privacy concerns tend to fall into a few broad categories. Some people are mainly thinking about companies building profiles of their behaviour across apps, websites, and devices. Some are concerned about a specific person or relationship. Some are in professional or personal situations where sensitive information needs careful handling. Some just want a cleaner digital life with fewer assumptions made about them.
Each of these calls for different approaches. A tool that helps with one may not help with another. Understanding which concern is most real for you keeps the advice practical rather than generic.
How much is your daily routine willing to change?
Some improvements are nearly invisible. They happen once and require no ongoing effort. Others involve changing how you use apps or services you rely on every day, which requires some adjustment.
Neither path is more virtuous. A small change you actually keep is more useful than a large change you reverse after a week. Knowing your own tolerance for friction helps you choose starting points that are likely to stick.
What do you use most, your phone, your computer, or both?
Your phone, your laptop, and your browser each have their own privacy considerations and their own places where improvements have the most impact. They're not the same problem.
The most useful starting point usually depends on where most of your daily activity happens. If you do almost everything on your phone, improvements there matter more than changes to a browser you rarely open. Starting where you actually are makes the advice more relevant.
Is there a specific situation you're thinking about?
Sometimes the concern is general, just a sense that things could be better. Sometimes it's specific, a job that involves sensitive information, a relationship that requires clear boundaries, a creative or research project, a life transition, or a particular kind of exposure you're aware of.
Specific situations tend to have more targeted answers than general privacy advice. If you have a concrete situation in mind, it's worth keeping it visible as you read. It will help you filter what's relevant from what's interesting but not immediately useful.
Useful to know
A few things that help
These apply no matter which path you choose.
Start where you spend most of your time
Changing something you use every day has more impact than changing something you rarely touch. If your phone is your primary device, improvements there matter more than changes to a browser you use once a week.
You don't have to change everything. Start with what's central to your daily life, and the rest becomes clearer from there.
Learn the concept before the tool
Understanding what a thing does, and what it doesn't, makes you better at using it and better at deciding when to move on. A tool you understand is more useful than a tool you installed because someone said it was good.
The Guides and Wiki are written for this approach, concept pages first, tool pages second, so you always know what you're actually choosing between.
One change at a time holds better than ten at once
A habit that sticks is more valuable than a configuration that gets reversed after a week. Sustainable improvements are usually slower ones.
If a change feels like too much, it probably is too much for right now. That's not a failure. It's useful information about where to start instead.
You don't need to protect everything
A useful starting point is specific. What actually matters to you, given your situation, is the right question. Trying to protect everything equally is exhausting and usually unsustainable.
A threat model is just a structured way of answering that question, what do I actually need to protect, from whom, and how much effort is that worth? It doesn't have to be complicated to be useful.