Intro

This guide is meant to be a quick resource full of basic concepts and actions steps that you can implement in order to protect your data and the data of your social network. Here are some notes to get started:

• Anything underlined is a clickable link that will take you to a website with more information.
• The action steps are of course optional and should be taken based off your threat model. Some people will want to take extra steps to be more private, some are ok with the basics.
• You can click "original" on any picture to see it better
• You can click on the arrows to expand the block for more content
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• Contact me with any questions or comments.

Why is Privacy Important for the Average Person?

Online privacy is about much more than preventing personalized ads. Many well intentioned but misguided individuals believe that since their lives are “boring”, their data isn’t valuable or that only criminals should be worried. However, medical data alone is a multi-billion dollar industry with which data brokers are cross referencing sources and creating highly detailed profiles of people who never would have imagined their data is worth anything. Privacy oriented steps online helps the average person by:

• Preventing creepy personalized ads
• Preventing one data leak from affecting other accounts
• Making sure personal details (such as a medical condition) aren’t released to unauthorized parties
• Protects information which, if obtained, could be used for unauthorized payments, identity theft, blackmail, stalking (cyber and real life), etc.
• Fights against large corporations, ISP’s, and government who gain money, power, and influence by amassing large collections of data through the data sharing network
• Hinders profile building and credit score creation by corporations and government
• Allows journalists, whistleblowers, and other prosecuted people to be protected
• Makes it harder for government to tyrannize and control the citizens of the country
• Keeps those in your social network secure from all of the above