How-To Guides
Every practical walkthrough on the site, grouped by what it applies to. These are the pages to work through rather than read, and each one says where it has aged.
Every practical walkthrough on the site, grouped by what it applies to. These are the pages to work through rather than read.
Each guide states what it changes and what it does not fix. Where a guide is tied to a specific OS version or device, it says so, and where it has aged, it says that too. For the reasoning behind any of it, the subject hubs are Digital Privacy, Security, and Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance.
Android
Guides for Android devices, including GrapheneOS and manufacturer skins.
- GrapheneOS: Post-Install Hardening and Usage Guide (Paid)
Flashing the OS is the easy part. Without a real password, a Lockdown habit, and some discipline about what you install afterward, you are carrying a… - Android Security (Samsung) (Paid)
You cannot harden a phone you have already been living on. This one starts at the recovery menu with a wipe and works forward tap by tap, written against… - Android "10" List
Ten things to change on a stock Android phone before you carry it anywhere. None of them take long, and the defaults were chosen for someone else's… - Disable Ad Tracking on Android (2026)
Android's ad tracking controls have moved, and the advertising ID is no longer going away. Where the settings are in 2026, what deleting the ad ID… - Revoke Camera and Microphone Access (Android)
Most guides still send you to Settings then Privacy, and a level was added since. Here is where the permission manager actually lives now, plus the… - Android Lockdown Mode
Two seconds on the power button drops the phone to PIN-only: no face, no fingerprint, no notification text on the lock screen. Worth finding the button… - Remove Stored Wi-Fi Networks (Android)
Every network your phone has joined is stored, and network names map to street addresses in public databases. The path moved, and the one in most older… - Disable Location Services (Android)
Precision is what makes location data worth selling. You will never be invisible to the network itself, but you can stop the apps on your phone from… - Opting Out of Google Ads Is Not De-Googling
Resetting your advertising ID is a two-tap fix with a narrow blast radius. Worth doing, and worth being honest about: Google is still stitched into…
Apple
Guides for iPhone, iPad and macOS.
- macOS Privacy and Security Hardening Guide (Paid)
A Mac out of the box is tuned for Apple's convenience, not for your exposure. This is the list of changes that shifts that default, ordered so you can… - Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (Encrypted Cloud Storage)
Switching it on takes a couple of minutes. The part that matters is the 28 characters Apple shows you once: lose them and nobody, Apple included, can open… - App Privacy Report: What Your Apple Device Is Actually Doing
Switch it on, wait a day, then look for the entries that make no sense: the calculator with location access, the domain your phone talks to all night.… - Disable Ad Tracking on Apple Devices (2026)
Apple sells advertising too, and the profile used to aim it is built on your own device. Three separate switches, in three different places, and turning… - Apple "10" List
Ten things an iPhone owner should be able to do without looking them up — including wiping the device after ten wrong passcodes, and finding the location… - Remove Stored Wi-Fi Networks (Apple)
The networks your iPhone remembers are a travel history: hotels, offices, airports, a friend's flat. Clearing the list is less alarming than the menu… - Safety Check and Access Audit (Apple)
Access accumulates quietly: a shared album, a partner's old device, an app you approved once and forgot. Apple built a wizard that lists all of it in one… - Disable Siri on iPhone
Two minutes in Settings. Switching Siri off is the easy part; the recordings Apple is already holding need a separate request before they go anywhere.
Cross-Platform
Guides that are not tied to one device or operating system.
- Privacy Personas: Compartmentalizing Your Digital Signature (Paid)
In a world of constant surveillance, protecting identity means fragmenting it. This post explores how one person can appear as many, using different… - Is Your App Safe? A Simple Guide to Assessing Vulnerabilities
A friend forwards a headline about an app getting hacked and you have no idea whether it touches you. Four terms and a short set of questions that turn a… - 6 Easy Cyber Security Steps
The attacks that actually reach ordinary people are not clever. They are a password reused on a site that got breached, and a text message someone else… - Dormant Accounts: The Attack Surface You Forgot You Created (Members)
A forum login from 2013 that shares a password with something you still use is an open door. Nobody watches the accounts they forgot they made, which is… - Introducing the Passphrase Card: Your Personalized Password Security Solution
A wallet card that carries no passwords, only a block of random words. What you memorize is a coordinate; what you carry is useless to whoever picks it up. - Account Privacy Dashboards
Apple, Google, and Microsoft each publish a page showing what they hold on you. Three links and half an hour tells you what is in the file, starting with…
Mobile
Guides that apply to phones generally, across both ecosystems.
- The Complete SimpleX Chat Hardening Guide (2025–2026)
SimpleX is the only messenger with no user IDs at all. Here's how to harden it — profiles, relays, Tor, and self-hosting — for real metadata privacy. - Signal Messenger: 2026
Signal is the closest thing to a trustworthy commercial messaging app that exists. End-to-end encryption is on by default, the protocol is open and… - SPAM CALLS BE GONE!
Registering takes five minutes and costs nothing, but it only binds callers who were already following the law. Scammers were never checking the list … - Signal Messenger Settings
Signal out of the box is good, not hardened. The gap is a short list of settings, starting with the one that stops someone porting your number and walking… - Signal Chat Security
Encryption protects the channel, not the membership. In a shared Signal room the real risk is who got in and how long their words stick around — and both…
Networking
Routers, VPNs, DNS and remote access.
- Building a Self-Controlled VPN Jumpbox in Your Browser (Members)
Your laptop should not be the thing touching the internet. Move that job onto a box you own, reach its desktop from a browser tab, and the coffee-shop… - Travel Router - Gli-Net (Paid)
How to guide to configure a Gli-Net travel router for secure networking.
Desktop
Windows, macOS and Linux workstations.
- Guide to Setting Up Tailscale for Secure RDP Access to a Home Windows Computer While Traveling (Paid)
With Tailscale, you can securely and seamlessly RDP into your home computer from anywhere in the world. This setup provides private, encrypted remote… - Wormhole Secure File Transfer (Paid)
Secure file transfer. A secure way to send large files to various people.
Browsers
Browser configuration and anti-fingerprinting.
- Firefox Privacy and Security Guide (2026)
Firefox 152 reorganised the privacy panel, and three recommendations in the old version of this guide are now wrong. One of them, disabling automatic… - WebRTC - Embedded Content Tracking
You can be paying for a VPN and still hand a website your real IP address, because the browser feature that powers video calls asks for it directly. Test…
Other sections: Digital Privacy · Security · Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance