---
date: '2021-04-01'
title: 'Digital privacy tools'
description: "This is a helpful, albeit basic, guide to online privacy tools."
tags: ['tech', 'privacy']
---

**[The New York Times:](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/style/tools-protect-your-digital-privacy.html)**

> Everything you do online — from browsing to shopping to using social networks — is tracked, typically as behavioral or advertising data. But browser extensions are simple, generally free add-ons that you can use to slow down or break this type of data collection, without completely ruining your experience of using the internet.

This is a helpful, albeit basic, guide to online privacy tools.<!-- excerpt --> In addition to the tools cited, I would recommend the following:

**Private email providers**

- [Fastmail](https://fastmail.com)
- [mailbox.org](https://mailbox.org)
- [Proton Mail](http://protonmail.com)

Ubiquitous free email providers profit by mining user data (whether humans are involved or not). Your inbox acts as a key to your digital life, and you should avoid using any provider that monetizes its contents.

**Adblockers**

- [1Blocker](https://1blocker.com)
- [Better](https://better.fyi)

These are both light-weight, independently developed ad and tracker blockers. 1Blocker is considerably more configurable, but could be daunting to new users (the defaults offer a nice balance though).

**DNS providers**

- [nextDNS](https://nextdns.io)
- [Cloudflare 1.1.1.1](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/what-is-1.1.1.1)

I use nextDNS on my home network for basic security and have a more restrictive configuration that heavily filters ads at the DNS level on specific devices. Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service doesn't offer the same features, but is still preferable to Google's offering or your ISP's default.
