A beginner’s guide to staying safe online.
05 Dec 2025 — 5 min read
With scammers around every corner, [online surveillance](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/?ref=gar…
A beginner’s guide to staying safe online.
05 Dec 2025 — 5 min read
With scammers around every corner, online surveillance at an all-time high, social media suppressing human connection in favor of ads, and many other unknown dangers lurking across the web, what can you do to stay safe?
Here are six common sense tips to protect yourself online.
In this article, there’s potential for jargon. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum but if I use a term that you don’t understand, feel free to ask for clarification in the comments below!
1. Password Manager
Password managers allow you to only remember one password. Then your computer will store and fetch the rest of them for you, and it will also create secure credentials for all the services you use.
Why This Matters
Show of hands: how many folks use the same email address and password for every account they have? (I’d be shocked if fewer than half of readers raise your hands.)
So let’s say you sign up for Amazon, Facebook, and your online banking using the same email address and password. Let’s say one of those services gets hacked.
Now, suddenly, your email and password are exposed. It’s trivial for a hacker to automatically check all the leaked data against other popular services. They don’t even need to target you, specifically. They can just scoop up the leaked data and then have a bot check services to see if the leaked data grants them access to other accounts.
Then suddenly, they find that your Amazon account has a credit card on file and they can make purchases.
This is called low hanging fruit and if you’re using the same username and password across multiple accounts, you’re the fruit.
My Recommendations
Let me start by saying the first, best thing you can do for your security is to use a trustworthy password manager. There are a few that I trust, but the one I use is ProtonPass.
Two Factor Authentication (sometimes called TFA or 2FA) or One-Time Password (OTP) is a way to confirm your identity. If you’ve ever had to type in a number from a text message or email when logging in to your bank account, that’s a form of 2FA.
This confirms that you not only know a secret (your password) but that you also have something (your phone or access to your email account).
However, email- or text message-based 2FA is problematic in a number of ways. Access to your email account can be stolen. Your phone number can be hijacked.
The best way to do 2FA is to have either an app on your phone or to use a password manager.
I highly recommend the use of an app like FreeOTP which can be found on Google Play and the App Store.
2. Secure Messaging Apps
Most people don’t consider the implications of the chats we’re involved in. We tell the people we’re closest to our most sensitive information.
It might also come as a surprise to know that most of the messaging apps we use are insecure by default.
Which services are not secure?
- Text messaging (also called SMS or RTS)
- iMessage
- Facebook Messenger
- Snapchat
- Telegram
- Pretty much none of them are secure
While Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp offer End-to-End Encrypted messaging, they go out of their way to make enabling E2EE a hassle.
Signal is the only one that I recommend for everyday folks. However, if you’re more technically savvy, Matrix is also good.
3. Remove Apps
You carry your phone with you everywhere you go. It knows where you are, who you’re with, and it can tell what you’re doing.
Why this is important
Apps like Facebook, Instagram, X, and others watch everything you do on your phone—even when you’re in other applications. But your smart devices are potentially always listening.
But that’s not all, if you have apps made by a company you’ve never heard of, then there’s a good chance it’s also harvesting a ton of information and selling it to some random data broker.
Remove these apps from your phone. And if you can’t cut these apps out of your life completely, use the web version. Often, you can “install” websites as apps on your phone. They have far fewer privileges and are therefore more secure this way.
If it’s controlled by a techbro like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pachai, Jeff Bezos, or Satya Nadella or if it’s operated by a Venture Capital-backed firm, you can confidently leave it behind.
Facebook, X, and other social media are making it easier every day.
- Filled to the brim with ads, hatred, and outrage.
- You rarely see the stuff your friends are posting anyway.
My Recommendation
If you want social media, I recommend Mastodon, Friendica, PixelFed, or Loops.
- There are no ads
- You only see posts from accounts that you follow
- There’s no algorithm to keep you addicted
In fact, after a few minutes of being on Mastodon, you end up getting bored and leaving. Let me assure you, that’s what you want from social media!
If you’re not getting bored on social media, that’s how you know it’s unhealthy.
Google & Apple
If you have a Gmail account, get rid of it. You can use ProtonMail instead.
If you use Google Drive, iCloud or Dropbox, switch to another solution. Nextcloud is amazing (and it’s what I personally use).
ProtonDrive is another great solution
5. Find alternative online retailers
Why this is important
There are few things more personal or more private than the things we buy. You can make a lot of educated guesses about a person, their habits, their beliefs, and more based on their purchases.
Before we move on to our last item, I want you to keep in mind that I’ve structured this list from least difficult to most difficult.
6. Stay informed.
Misinformation is everywhere. Platforms like Facebook and X are specifically designed to show us misinformation we’re likely to agree with (and therefore, promote more).
Remember the maxim:
If you’re not paying for a service, then YOU are the product.
“But I have nothing to hide”
I hear this all the time. “I don’t have anything to hide, so why should I be worried?”
That’s not true. Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you still have a vested interest in privacy. As a thought experiment, think about all the things on your phone that you wouldn’t want a stranger having access to. Now ask yourself, realistically, someone who works at Google, Apple, Facebook, X, Amazon, etc. are any different from that hypothetical stranger.
You don’t know what I am going to do with your phone. You don’t know what I’m looking for, or if I’ll be installing some software that monitors everything you’re doing. You don’t know if I’ll be looking for evidence of a crime—even whatever evidence I find is seemingly innocuous to you.
According to Harvey A. Silvergate, a civil liberties lawyer, activist, and former board member of the Massachusetts ACLU:
*The average American *unwittingly commits three felonies a day
So even if you feel like you’ve got nothing to hide, there are lots of things you should not want to share.
A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client
— Attributed to Benjamin Franklin
All of this is why a good lawyer will tell you to never talk to the cops. Never provide testimony. Even if you’re the victim and you know you’re innocent, the system is your adversary.
We are heading into an increasingly corrupt, increasingly uncertain world. Your Alexa may not be listening to everything you do or say you today. But that could change with the flip of a digital switch and you’d be none the wiser.
I appreciate that all of this sounds incredibly paranoid. And admittedly, it could be characterized as such. But there’s a fine line between “paranoia” and “awareness.”
If you care about maintaining your right to privacy, I believe this level of awareness is warranted.
About The Author:
Gardiner Bryant
I’m an educator, free software advocate, and storyteller. My passion lies in Linux gaming, self-hosting, the fediverse, and the human stories behind the tech we use every day. I believe in privacy, justice, community, and integrity.
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