Security
Deciding what to protect is a privacy question. Making it hard to reach is a security one. Thirty-five articles on devices, accounts, encryption and the network layer.
Security is the practical half of privacy. Deciding what to protect is a privacy question; making it hard to reach is a security one. This section covers device hardening, authentication, encryption, and the network layer, from first steps through to specific platform guides.
If you are starting from zero, work down the list below in order. For the reasoning behind the choices, see Digital Privacy.
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- 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… - Password Managers
Recycling one password across accounts means a single breach opens all of them. A manager trades that problem for one very good master key — a real trade… - Multi-Factor Authentication
A leaked password stops being an emergency the moment something else stands behind it. The real decision is whether that second factor lives on the phone…
Device Hardening
Making a specific device harder to compromise, from defaults chosen for someone else's benefit.
- 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… - Four Ways to get a Private Phone (Paid)
Four Ways to Build a Private Phone: A Field Guide to Lockdown Mode, GrapheneOS, Cape, and Glacier. A thorough, vendor-neutral look at four distinct… - 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… - Travel Router - Gli-Net (Paid)
How to guide to configure a Gli-Net travel router for secure networking. - Accrescent - Play Store Replacement
Accrescent.app is a privacy and security-centric alternative Android app store that aims to offer a safer distribution model than mainstream platforms… - 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… - 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… - 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… - 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… - GrapheneOS Security Updates (Members)
GrapheneOS handles memory safety and sandboxing on its own. What it does not decide on its own is how much your radios talk, what resolves your DNS, or… - Computer "10" List
Ten things any computer user should be able to do without looking them up. Nothing exotic on the list — which is the point, because the gaps in it are… - Spark Forge is live!
The first post on the site, kept as the record of where this started. Two sentences of intent, no technical content, and a fair statement of what the rest…
Authentication
Passwords, second factors, and the accounts that everything else hangs off.
- 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… - Password Managers
Recycling one password across accounts means a single breach opens all of them. A manager trades that problem for one very good master key — a real trade… - 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… - 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… - 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… - Multi-Factor Authentication
A leaked password stops being an emergency the moment something else stands behind it. The real decision is whether that second factor lives on the phone… - 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. - Two-Factor Authentication Devices for 2023
A 2023 snapshot of the hardware key market, when the decision came down to price, durability, and whether you could read the firmware. The specific models… - Password Cards
A password you carry in your wallet, written down in plain sight, and still useless to whoever picks it up. The card is random; the route you take through…
VPN
Moving the question of who watches your traffic, and understanding what that does and does not buy.
- 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… - 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… - Travel Routers
Hotel Wi-Fi is a network you share with a few hundred strangers and, occasionally, one fake access point. A travel router turns that from a problem with… - 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…
Encryption
Protecting content in transit and at rest, and understanding what encryption does not cover.
- Domain Naming Service (DNS)
A VPN protects what you send. It does not always cover the question you asked first — which site, and where does it live. Whoever answers that lookup… - Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A VPN does not make you anonymous. It moves the question of who gets to watch your traffic away from the coffee shop and your carrier, and onto one… - Wormhole Secure File Transfer (Paid)
Secure file transfer. A secure way to send large files to various people.
Messaging
Choosing and hardening the tools you actually talk to people with.
- 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 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…
Location
Where you have been, who knows, and how long the record lasts.
- Faraday Bags
A bag that genuinely works turns your phone into a brick until you take it out. That is the whole feature, and it is also the whole complaint. Which bags…
Social Engineering
Attacks aimed at people rather than systems.
- Phishing, Vishing, and Spam
Urgency is the tell. Your bank will happily let you hang up and call the number on the back of the card. A vishing caller cannot afford to let you do…
Identity
What ties activity back to a person, and how those links get made.
- Social Media Hardening
The Defense Department publishes step-by-step social media lockdown guides and gives them away for free. The screenshots have aged; the logic has not.…
Other sections: Digital Privacy · Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance · How-To Guides