The toolbox

The end-to-end encryption standard: open protocol, funded by a foundation and not by your data. It is also the one Chat Control would structurally endanger.

End-to-end encrypted and usable without a phone number or email: you exist as a random ID with nothing tied to your identity. Hosted in Switzerland, one-time purchase, no subscription.

A hardened Signal client for Android: it encrypts the local database at rest and locks the app after a timeout, useful if your phone is seized or stolen. It talks to the Signal network, so your contacts change nothing.

The only one that gives you no identifier at all, no number and no account, so there is no contact graph for it to hand over. The top choice when the metadata of who talks to whom is exactly what you want to hide.

A Signal fork that drops the phone number: you create an account from a simple recovery phrase, and your messages travel through an onion-routing network that hides your IP address. Audited by Quarkslab, with no central server to subpoena for your metadata.

Built on the open Matrix protocol: end-to-end encrypted and decentralised, and you can even run your own server. Handy for a family, a group or a team that wants to keep control.

A messenger that does away with servers entirely: messages travel peer to peer over Tor, and even with no Internet, over Bluetooth or local Wi-Fi. Built for activists and journalists when the network is cut off or watched, open source and free.

Encrypted inbox, Swiss jurisdiction, a business model aligned with the user. To transition, start by routing sensitive accounts there: banking, health, government.

End-to-end encrypted inbox, including the subject line and address book, hosted in Germany. A solid alternative to Proton for moving your sensitive accounts off mailboxes that read you.

Generates a throwaway address per service that forwards to your real inbox without ever exposing it. Spam arrives, you kill the alias, and you know exactly who sold your address.

Same idea as SimpleLogin: a unique address per service that hides your real inbox and can be switched off in one click. Open source, with a generous free tier and the option to self-host the whole thing.

A paid, privacy-focused inbox hosted in Germany under EU law, with message encryption and a real online suite (calendar, contacts, documents). The understated alternative to Proton and Tuta for anyone who wants a full set of tools without feeding advertising.

Open source, audited, free for the essentials. The best manager is the one you’ll actually use, and this one leaves no excuse not to start.

The password manager from the Proton ecosystem: an open-source, audited vault with built-in email aliases and a 2FA generator. A good fit if you already live in Proton and want everything in one place.

A fully local vault, no cloud and no account: the encrypted file stays on your machine and you back it up yourself. Ideal if you would rather hand nothing to a third-party service.

The Android counterpart to KeePassXC: a fully local vault that opens the standard .kdbx files, with no cloud and no account. Ideal for carrying your vault on your phone while keeping the key to yourself, with fingerprint unlock.

Paid and not open source, but very polished and regularly audited, with a travel mode that hides vaults when you cross a border. A comfortable choice, especially for families and companies.

An authenticator app beats SMS, a physical key beats the app. Step up on the accounts that carry your life.

An open-source 2FA app, simple and with no mandatory account: it generates your one-time codes offline and can back them up encrypted. A clean alternative to Google Authenticator, with no ties to an advertising giant.

A physical key requires real presence to sign in: it won’t be fooled by a fake login page, unlike SMS or a code.

A Bitwarden-compatible server rewritten to be tiny: you host your own vault at home, on a plain Raspberry Pi, while keeping the official Bitwarden apps. The pick when you want cloud convenience without trusting anyone with your passwords.

The only major browser still backed by a foundation rather than an advertising giant. Configurable, resistant to tracking, and the base you plug uBlock Origin into.

Firefox with the telemetry stripped out and privacy turned on by default: uBlock Origin bundled, tracking and fingerprinting reined in from the first launch. The pick if you like Firefox but want everything locked down out of the box, without an hour in the settings.

Chromium under the hood but stripped of Google telemetry, with ad and tracker blocking on by default. A good compromise if you need sites that only love Chrome but still want tracking cut off.

Built by the Tor Project and Mullvad to make you look ordinary: everyone looks the same, so your browser fingerprint no longer gives you away. Use it with a VPN, and don’t log into your accounts.

The browser that routes your traffic through three relays of the Tor network: neither the site you visit nor your ISP sees who you are and what you read at the same time. The reference when anonymity is not a nice-to-have but a necessity. Don’t resize it, don’t log into your accounts.

The gold-standard ad and tracker blocker, light and effective, on every browser. Blocking ads also blocks the web’s number-one infection vector. Set nothing: the default lists are enough.

Made by the EFF, it learns on its own to spot the trackers that follow you from site to site and shuts them down. A good complement to uBlock Origin, with nothing to configure.

A hardened Chromium for Android, the successor to Bromite: ad blocking built into the engine, anti-fingerprinting and telemetry removed. A good pick on the phone if you stay on a Chromium base but want Google’s tracking cut off.

Your search history is the diary you didn’t know you were keeping. Handing it to an engine that doesn’t store it is an immediate win.

Google’s results without the ad profile: Startpage acts as a buffer and keeps neither your history nor your IP address. Handy when you want Google quality without the tracking.

Its own index, independent of Google and Bing, which is rare and matters for a diverse web. Free and tracking-free, right in your browser.

A French engine that doesn’t track you or build a profile, hosted in Europe. A simple choice if you want to stay under EU jurisdiction.

A British engine running on its own index, built by its own crawler: no Google or Bing behind the results, which is exceedingly rare. No tracking, no ad profile, just a genuinely independent source for the web.

An open-source metasearch engine that queries dozens of engines on your behalf and returns the aggregated results, without ever passing along your profile. Pick a public instance on searx.space, or host your own so you depend on no one.

A subscription search engine, precisely so you are not the product: no ads, no ad profile, and the option to tune or block domains in your results. An honest, upfront model where you are the customer and not the advertiser.

Open-source, audited apps, a no-logs policy, and above all a genuine free tier with no data cap, which is rare and honest. The ideal way in to test a serious VPN.

The most radical on anonymity: no account, just an account number, and you can even pay in cash by post. Flat price, open-source audited apps, and no data to sell.

Same philosophy as Mullvad: no logs, audited, anonymous accounts, and it deliberately refuses the misleading “VPN makes you invisible” marketing. A serious option if you want a trustworthy third choice.

Customisable DNS filtering that blocks ads, trackers and malicious sites before they even load, across all your devices at once. Doubles as parental control.

A free public DNS resolver, run by a Swiss non-profit, that blocks known malicious domains before they even load. Set it in one line on your phone, computer or router.

A DNS resolver that blocks ads, trackers and malicious sites before they load, across all your devices at once, with a dashboard and customisable filters. Free tier with no account, paid plan for fine-grained settings and statistics.

The version you install at home: a filtering DNS server, open source and free, that blocks ads and trackers for the whole household network, router and smart devices included. Close to Pi-hole, with encrypted DNS built in and a polished interface.

Creates encrypted volumes or encrypts a whole drive, including a USB stick you carry around. Publicly audited, it’s the reference when a lost or stolen computer must reveal nothing.

Encrypts your files before they land on Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud, file by file. The provider stores gibberish, you keep the key, and nothing changes about how you sync.

A tiny tool that encrypts a file with a password and nothing else: no install, no account, XChaCha20 and Argon2id under the hood. Audited by Radically Open Security with no major issues, now frozen but perfectly stable. Ideal for a single sensitive file to send or stash.

The classic building block of public-key encryption: sign and encrypt files or emails that only you and your recipient can open. Kleopatra gives it a graphical interface so you can skip the command line.

The Google Drive of the Proton ecosystem: your files are end-to-end encrypted before they leave the device, filenames included. Swiss jurisdiction, open-source audited apps, and a free tier to start moving your documents off the clouds that read you.

An end-to-end encrypted cloud, hosted and built in Germany, with open-source apps anyone can inspect. The most affordable price in its class and 10 GB free with zero knowledge: the provider never sees your files.

Your own cloud, at home or on a host you trust: files, calendar, contacts and photos under your sole control, with no reliance on a tech giant. Open source, extensible, and perfect for a family or a group that wants to take its data back.

The end-to-end encrypted alternative to Google Photos and iCloud: your memories upload encrypted, with automatic backup, shared albums and a family plan. Open source and audited by Cure53. From the same team as the Ente Auth authenticator.

Shares a file straight from computer to computer over the Tor network: no middleman server stores anything, and your contact gets a temporary .onion address. The right move to hand over a sensitive document without trusting a cloud with it.

Sends a file from one machine to another with a short code of a few words, end-to-end encrypted and with no cloud in between. You read the code out loud or over the phone, the transfer opens then closes: nothing lingers anywhere.

A universal AirDrop that works right in the browser: open the same page on two devices on the same network and send your files locally, with no install and no cloud. Open source and self-hostable, ideal for moving a photo from phone to computer without routing it through the Internet.

The self-hosted alternative to Google Photos: automatic backup from the phone, albums, search and face recognition, but everything runs on your own server. Open source and free, to keep years of memories without handing them to a giant that mines them.

A hardened Android with no Google services by default, built for Pixel phones: it toughens the system deeply, sandboxes apps and keeps any Google account optional and contained. Today’s high point for a smartphone that doesn’t spy on you.

A de-Googled Android backed by a non-profit foundation, with its own suite (mail, calendar, cloud) and an app store that flags trackers. Installable on many models, or preloaded on Murena phones if you would rather not tinker.

The community successor to CyanogenMod: a clean Android with no manufacturer skin, available for a long list of devices, often well past the end of official support. Great for extending an old phone’s life while scrubbing out the factory bloat.

An end-to-end encrypted notebook, plain and distraction-free: neither the service nor an attacker can read what you write. Open source, audited by Cure53 and Trail of Bits, with a free tier that easily covers the essentials.

An open-source notes and to-do app, with end-to-end encryption and sync of your choice: your own cloud, Nextcloud, or local only. Everything is Markdown, so your notes are genuinely yours and export with no format lock-in.

An encrypted take on Google Docs, all in the browser: documents, spreadsheets, kanban boards and forms you edit together while the server can read none of it. Built in France by XWiki, open source, with documents you can share without even creating an account.

An end-to-end encrypted notebook designed to be simple and cross-platform, open source down to the server. A good modern middle ground if Standard Notes feels too austere: the same privacy guarantees, a gentler interface.

The reference free office suite, backed by a foundation: word processor, spreadsheet and slides that run locally, with no subscription, no account and no cloud reading your documents. It opens Microsoft formats, so you are locked into no vendor.

An office suite whose layout stays closest to Word, Excel and PowerPoint: handy when you swap .docx or .xlsx files and want no rendering surprises. Open source, usable locally or on your own server, with a free tier and paid plans for collaboration.

Real-time document editing in the browser, in the style of Google Docs, but hosted by you: text and spreadsheets stay on your server, never with a third party mining them. Built on LibreOffice, it plugs into Nextcloud for an online suite fully under your control.

A maps and navigation app built on OpenStreetMap, fully offline and tracking-free: download the maps once, then drive or walk with no server logging your movements. No ads, no account, no data collection.

The other big offline OpenStreetMap app, richer in options: cycling and hiking routes, contour lines, voice navigation. A bit denser than Organic Maps, but unbeatable if you want to tune everything without handing anything to Google Maps.

Before you share a photo, its EXIF data gives away the place, time and device: this small Android app wipes them from a simple share. It slots into the Share menu, you pick Scrambled Exif, and the image comes out clean.

The desktop counterpart: drop your photos, videos or PDFs into the window and it strips the hidden metadata (GPS location, device model, date) in one go. Open source, on Windows, Mac and Linux, so you never publish more than the image itself.

The Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit: it strips the hidden metadata from your images, PDFs, office documents, audio and video, in a single command or a right-click. Open source and free, it’s the engine many other tools rely on so you never publish more than the file itself.

Photo sharing in the style of Instagram, but ad-free and algorithm-free: no gamed feed, no data harvesting to resell your attention. Open source and free, on independent servers with no single company in charge.

A directory that lists, service by service, where and how to delete your account, colour-coded from easy to nearly impossible. The concrete starting point for shrinking your footprint: close the accounts you no longer use before they leak.

Wipes your old posts, photos and likes in one sweep across dozens of platforms, from X to Reddit to Discord and Facebook. Ideal for scrubbing years of public traces you no longer want resurfacing, with filters by date or keyword.

A local app that erases your old tweets, likes and messages on X, plus your posts on Bluesky, working from an archive downloaded to your own machine. The successor to Semiphemeral, open source, to take back control of what these networks keep on you.

Empties the caches, logs and temporary files your system and apps pile up, and can overwrite free space to make deleted files unrecoverable. Open source and free, on Windows and Linux, to wipe the crumbs you thought were already gone.

A desktop tool that strips the preinstalled, useless apps (bloatware) from your Android, with no root at all, just by plugging it in over USB. Open source and free, with lists that explain each package so you disable only what you truly want gone.

Enter your email, find out which leaks affect you, change those passwords first. A leak never dies, but you can make it useless.

Demystifies privacy policies and terms of service at a glance, so you know what you’re really accepting before you click “Accept”.

Test the fingerprint your browser leaves: you can be identified even without cookies, by your fonts, resolution and extensions. Awareness is already a defense.

The EFF tool that shows in real time how trackers and your browser fingerprint follow you, and whether your defenses actually hold. A good complement to AmIUnique to check that your blocker is really doing its job.

Scans Android apps and lists the trackers and permissions hidden inside, before you install them. Enough to see which ones quietly spy on you and choose with your eyes open.

France’s official free do-not-call registry. Add your number and shut the most ordinary front door of phone scams.

Decoy files or links that alert you the moment someone touches them: a tripwire in your data that reveals an intrusion before the damage. Free.