Staying Private and goin Dark Online

Last updated 12 months ago

Starting out - Creating accounts

Create a account, make the email something random that isn't related to you. An alternative to Protonmail is .

Next would be login to with your Proton account. You'll be using this to create emails for individual accounts/services you'll be using and making. An alternative to SimpleLogin is .

Go to for a Password manager. Make a new email using SimpleLogin for this, and start using this to save all your passwords/logins/and etc.

When making online payments use . This lets you create virtual payment cards for one-time purchases or subscriptions. NOTE: Some services will not let you or will fight you on using these virtual cards.

I also HIGHLY recommend signing up for the other services Proton offers, such as their and . There is usually a bundle package for email and VPN and all in one.

From here, when signing up for anything, use SimpleLogin to make an email for it to have it forwarded to your Proton account, saving the logins in Bitwarden, and making payments with Privacy.

Hardware

I personally recommend a Google Pixel Phone - Unlocked, and installing or . iPhones are good as well though some of their privacy policies lately kinda of sketchy(Eg. Scanning iCloud pictures and such). Using instead of a normal carrier. So you'll be getting a new phone number. When giving out your new phone number to family/friends, make sure you trust them to not give it out to others.

Most machines work but will depend on your use case, but rather than using Windows or Mac OS, go with (for more advanced) or base . I typically use a flavor of for ease as most things just work with it but to make it more privacy based you will want to look into what changes should be made.

Software

I myself am a fan of Librewolf as it's a fork of Firefox, with more out of the box privacy features, and you can use containers, "Each container is isolated from the others, so you can access sites logged into different accounts.". So this will keep sites isolated from each other as to not share cookies and other info with each other.

Self host as much as possible, such as storing your Bitwarden manager and files on your own machines.

Starting out - Creating accounts

Create a account, make the email something random that isn't related to you. An alternative to Protonmail is .

Next would be login to with your Proton account. You'll be using this to create emails for individual accounts/services you'll be using and making. An alternative to SimpleLogin is .

Go to for a Password manager. Make a new email using SimpleLogin for this, and start using this to save all your passwords/logins/and etc.

I also HIGHLY recommend signing up for the other services Proton offers, such as their and . There is usually a bundle package for email and VPN and all in one.

From here, when signing up for anything, use SimpleLogin to make an email for it to have it forwarded to your Proton account, saving the logins in Bitwarden, and making payments with Privacy.

Hardware

Software

can be used to encrypt files/folder to be uploaded to cloud storage for extra security.

for a Password manager.

for File hosting.

or Browser.

I myself am a fan of Librewolf as it's a fork of Firefox, with more out of the box privacy features, and you can use containers, "Each container is isolated from the others, so you can access sites logged into different accounts.". So this will keep sites isolated from each other as to not share cookies and other info with each other.

, , or for chat messaging, though you will need other people on the platform as well or your message will not encrypted.

for creating phone numbers, emails, etc. to use instead of your real personal information. Note: You may need a stock android/iPhone device to sign up for a plan. I was unable to while using CalyxOS.

Self host as much as possible, such as storing your Bitwarden manager and files on your own machines.