What the fuck

Step one, download and install Firefox.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

It will ask if you want to import all your bookmarks and saved passwords from your current browser/s. Do that. It will also ask if you want to make it your default browser. Do that too.

You will be given the option to create an account, but it’s not mandatory. It’s just a convenience service if you want to access your bookmarks and saved passwords on different devices.

Firefox has a load of built-in privacy protections but we’re going to install some addons to make it EVEN BETTER. Don’t worry they’re all free and once you’ve installed them you don’t have to think about them again.

First, Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials. Firefox does still set your default search engine to Google, we don’t want that. You could manually change it but the Duck Duck Go addon gives you some tracker blocking, encryption, private searching, all set up and ready to go

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-for-firefox

Next you need an ad blocker. ABP went stupid, so here’s uBlock

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Do you use farcebook or any related product like instagram? Facebook Container automatically puts those in a little quarantine pen so they can’t follow you around and spy on what else you’re doing

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/

If you have multiple accounts (eg. work/school, family, public, personal, private) you can use Firefox Multi-Account Containers to manage them and keep their footprints separate

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere are published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and those people are serious as a heart attack when it comes to online privacy.

Privacy Badger sends a do not track signal, and also breaks link tracking by sites like facebook, twitter, etc.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17

HTTPS Everywhere is… ok there’s a lot to explain here, and we’re already longposting so just, every time you connect to any page it makes it more secure.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/

If you want to learn a bit about how this works and why it’s good to have, might as well start with the HTTPS page on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS

You could stop here, that’s pretty good. But you can do more. You could install NoScript. A big warning with this one, it can break half the internet. It’s a LOT more user friendly than it used to be but if you can’t figure shit out by fucking around you should probably skip it. It blocks scripts from running without permission, protecting you from drive-by scripts that give your computer herpes, but also sometimes protecting you from script-heavy sites working at all.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

Lastly an honourable mention for Ghostery. Ghostery has been a solid privacy addon for years, and now has adblocking powers. Honestly I haven’t used it in ages, a long time ago it conflicted with something else I deemed more important so I removed it and I never got around to picking it back up, but it has a great reputation and is trusted by a lot of people who I trust.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/

Now, this all only covers your browser activity, which is a lot but you will still need to manually adjust privacy settings on your google/gmail/youtube account/s if you have any, your facebook/instagram account/s if you have any, and your actual gotdamn operating system if you use windows. I know it seems like a lot of effort, I’m a lazy bitch too, but it’s very set-and-forget, you only need to do it once, and then just review it a couple of times a year.

Here’s some stuff about Windows 10 privacy settings

https://pixelprivacy.com/resources/windows-privacy-settings/

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/5-privacy-settings-to-change-in-windows-10/

And some stuff about google privacy settings

https://mashable.com/article/google-privacy-setting-you-should-enable-now/

And some stuff about facebook privacy settings

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/facebook-privacy-settings-2939307

And here’s an honest explanation of what a VPN really does and does not do, why you don’t actually need one, and the few real reasons you might ever want one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

And  a bit about password managers

https://www.cnet.com/news/best-password-managers-for-2020/

This is by no means the limit of the steps you can take to secure your online privacy, if you want to go deeper you definitely can. But if you don’t want to or don’t have the time or aren’t very technically minded, this will still put you way ahead of the pack. It won’t make you The Most Private but it will make you Much More Private Than Most, and it should take you less than an hour or two, depending on how many accounts you have on predatory datenkraken sites.

ProtonMail is a free email service that’s not google (already a good start), but also encrypts all your mail so no one but you and the person you’re emailing can read it

From experience, Tor is a lot more user-friendly than you might think. It does take a little bit of fiddling and getting used to, but the payoff is that all of your traffic becomes extremely hard to track. They have a desktop browser that’s built on Firefox and comes pre-installed with many of the extensions listed above. I recommend trying it on without uninstalling your current browser, just to see how you like it