Introduction - Doorstep to the Rabbit Hole

Maintaining any internet privacy in 2026 feels hard. There's an old adage that if a product's free, then you (e.g. your data) is the product. In the AI era, that's sadly more true than ever. 

I've put some steps you can take to secure your data and your internet experience. It’s really designed for friends and family, especially in the fight against enshittification. Hopefully it helps someone. If it’s useful, please share.

Remember, there’s no golden bullet for privacy unless you go live on a remote island with no digital comms. Which sounds lame. It’s up to you as to what level of privacy you’re happy to try and achieve, It’s not binary. Any steps you can take are better than not doing them.

Security though, that’s a bit less binary as you gotta keep those script kiddies and hackers at bay. I’ll try and make this clear and obvious.

There are tables in the "How this is meant to work" section which are a rough guide to the perceived difficulty level of installing and/or migrating to a new technology. I’ve tried to keep jargon to a minimum, but if you find yourself getting a bit bamboozled, which is totally fair, there’s a Glossary too.