To limit your accessible data footprint, transition from current messaging applications to Signal. Reason? E2E Encryption and privacy protection.

SMS communications are unencrypted, allowing anyone to intercept and read communications between parties without issue. In contrast, Signal ensures privacy and security for messages, calls, and video chats via E2E encryption both at-rest (i.e., messages stored on your phone or desktop application) and in-transit (i.e., while sending and receiving communications). Further, Signal does not breach customer privacy and security by decrypting, data mining, and/or sharing communications to others (i.e., law enforcement). This makes Signal an optimal choice for anyone engaging in digital communication today.

ProtonMail is a private email service developed and maintained by Proton. Proton is an open-source company created by former scientists at CERN who believe that trust is earned through transparency. All the source code used in Proton's applications is public and freely available for inspection. For Proton, privacy and security come first.

ProtonMail uses open source, independently audited end-to-end and zero-access encryption to secure email communications at rest and in-transit. Even Proton itself can't read your emails. Learn more about Proton's privacy and security promise here.

ProtonMail offers both free and paid service tiers. For free, users are afforded an email address with MFA, up to 150 messages per day, encrypted file share via ProtonDrive, a medium-speed VPN connection via ProtonVPN, a privacy-preserving calendar via ProtonCalendar, and 1GB of total storage space. For a $4 USD per month, Proton affords users 10 email addresses, each with unlimited messages, a custom email domain, 20 calendars with calendar sharing, and 15 GB total storage. If needed, Proton offers at $10 USD per month an even broader service plan. Learn more about ProtonMail pricing options here.

Other Notable Options:

A quick comparison with the status quo shows ProtonMail outperforming Gmail in privacy and security measures, from the most basic to the advanced. ProtonMail has suffered only one reported CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), while Google Gmail has suffered more than 15 publicly reported vulnerabilities. Proton has endured no Antitrust investigations, while Google has commanded an astounding 10+ Antitrust lawsuits across the US, the UK, and the EU, related to Advertising (learn more here).

Companies such as Proton, FastMail, and HushMail ensure our private identities and electronic communications stay private. In contrast, companies such as Google[1][2] and Microsoft[1][2][3] amplify their profits and our personal risk by mining our personal email data (learn more here and here).

In the United States there exists no mandatory reporting regiment for CVEs today; only "good-faith." It is up to the company and/or the discoverer to make public any discovered vulnerabilites and exposures. When companies such as Google and Microsoft choose not to announce a vulnerability (let's say, it's ongoing and they are still trying to identify the root-cause and push a fix), we end-users don't know we are exposed. For the company this amounts to a trouble ticket and an escalation. For end-users this amounts to identity theft.

Firefox supports addition of multiple search engines, custom search Engines, ranking of search suggestions in relation to browsing history, and more. Learn more about search customization in Firefox web browser here.

DuckDuckGo offers a privacy-focused search experience. DuckDuckGo is perhaps most well-known for its privacy feature called "untracked search." While privacy-preserving, DuckDuckGo SEO suffers in terms of relevance and robustness, such that it becomes increasingly burdensome to find exactly what one is actually looking for when (re-)forming a search query. One may find themselves re-indexing the internet in hopes of landing a meaningful result. Maybe that's a good thing, for those with time to spare. Learn more about search integration and customization in DuckDuckGo here.

Brave search engine offers users ability to customize and refine search performance via user-defined search engine shortcuts and re-ranking optimization functions.

Custom searchEngines enable users to create shortcuts for quicklinking to personal email accounts, executing queries across specific news sites, retail sites, and more. For example, let's define a shortcut for querying HackerNews:

1. In the address bar, enter brave://settings/searchEngines.

2. Under "Site Search," select "Add" to create a shortcut. Define the custom search engine name (e.g., HackerNews Query) and the shortcut (e.g., hnq). In the URL, substitute %s in place of the query item (e.g., query=%s), and "Save."

Search Engine: HackerNews Query
Shortcut: hnq
URL: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%s&sort=byDate&type=story

3. Navigate to the address bar, enter the shortcut hnq + [spacebar].

4. Type a query item (e.g., 'crypto'), and press [enter].

5. A search query is executed in HackerNews, and results are displayed. Pretty nice!

Custom Search Re-Ranking

The "Amazon-Excluded Search" Goggle refines the results of any search query performed using Brave Search such that it discards Amazon-owned companies from appearing altogether.

Before applying the filter:

After applying the filter:

Similarly, the "No Pinterest" Goggle refines the results of any Brave search query such that it removes pages and threads hosted on Pinterest from appearing in the search results.

Before applying the filter:

After applying the filter:

FireFox Web Browser

For Firefox, Adblock browser extensions are uBlock Origin (Mozilla) and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (Mozilla).

Chromium-based Web Browsers

Both Vivaldi and Brave offer users a built-in, highly customizable Ad and Tracking blocker extension. For Brave, the default Adblocker extension is called "Shield," with uBlock Origin configured as the default Adblocker setting. Shield customizations I've found useful include the following:

In addition to Shield customization, I've added the browser extension DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (Chrome). As new trackers and ad services are detected by DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, I add them to the custom filter list in Shield.

Authy is a free two-factor authentication application developed by Twilio. For a given account, Authy generates time-sensitive codes locally, on your device, based on a secret key. Authy is available for use on both mobile and desktop devices: iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Authy supports 2FA for many applications/services including:

LinkedIn | PayPal | Reddit | Binance | Uber | Grammarly | MailChimp
Bitwarden | Amazon | Facebook | Instagram | Dropbox | Box | Cloudflare
Slack | Twitter | FastMail | ProtonMail | Gmail | GitHub | Microsoft
SnapChat | Teamviewer | Twitch | Pinterest | Apple | EverNote | Discord

Learn more about Authy here.

Yubikey is a hardware authentication device developed and manufactured by Yubico. It is used to protect access to user accounts on computers, networks, and online services. Yubikeys are personal USB security keys; they plug into your computer and/or phone and are used alongside your primary password to complete the second half of a MFA web login authentication process. Each Yubikey device has a unique code built on to it which is used to generate codes that help confirm your unique identity.

2FA via apps and SMS, while an improvement to the alternative (single-authentication), remain vulnerable to time-delay attacks. Yubikey offers an additional level of robustness, as it can protect users from phishing and advanced man-in-the-middle attacks, e.g., attacks in which a person or maligning process attempts to intercept the two-factor authentication as it is entered and processed. Yubikeys are tech industry standard.

Yubikey supports 2FA for many applications/services including:

AWS (IAM) | Google | Microsoft | Apple | Brave | Oracle
Dropbox | 1Password | Bitwarden | Duo | Cloudflare | Linux
ProtonMail | FastMail | GitHub | GitLab | Reddit | Drupal
Binance | Kraken | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Twitch
Teamviewer | Ebay |  DocuSign | Tesla | Salesforce | Shopify

Learn more about Yubikey here.

Password theft is a serious problem. Websites and applications we use are under constant attack. When security breaches occur, they expose sensitive and unique identifying information about us (e.g., username, email address, password, phone number, physical address) to the world. Using a password manager helps protect us against password theft occurrences, and limits our exposure when security breaches happen.

Bitwarden is an open source password management service that stores sensitive information (i.e., usernames, passwords, metadata) in an encrypted vault. At present Bitwarden is one of the safest ways to store all logins and passwords while also keeping them synced between all of your devices, and secure via MFA.

Bitwarden offers native desktop applications for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and native mobile applications for Android and iOS. Bitwarden also offers browser extension support for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, and Tor Browsers. Users can leverage Bitwarden web interface, desktop/mobile application, and/or browser extension to create and edit entries in their password vault.

Bitwarden offers both free and paid service tiers. The Free tier includes a password generator, credential sharing, and the option to self-host. With the Free tier users can sync an unlimited number of password vault items across multiple devices. For most users, the free service tier is sufficient.

Note: Be sure to choose a long passphrase as a PIN (i.e., don't choose a 4-6 alphanumeric value). Learn more about brute-forcing Bitwarden PINs here.

Other Notable Options:

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) help our data remain private and secure. VPNs work by creating a encrypted tunnel between our device and our VPN provider, protecting us in two key ways:

• Concealing our IP address, which protects our identity and geolocation.
• Encrypting our traffic between us and our VPN provider, so that no one on our local network can decipher or modify it.

VPNs protect us when connecting to public WiFi networks (e.g., Starbucks, the airport, by accident when our smartphones are set to WiFi -> ON + Autoconnect). VPNs also limit the amount of data our internet service provider (ISP) can reliably gather (and sell) about our internet usage.

Note: VPNs are not free.

Notable VPN Service Options:

Learn more about VPN options here.