Section
Online Privacy
Guides, explainers, and practical reads updated regularly.
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Turning on a second factor, in the order the agencies rank them
Not all two-factor methods are equal. CISA ranks four tiers and puts SMS last. Here is how to set yours up highest-first.
Four places your personal information leaks, and the control for each
Privacy advice usually treats the browser as the whole problem. The FTC's own hub treats it as one surface out of several.
A social media privacy review that takes twenty minutes
CISA names managing social media settings as one of three core privacy actions. This is a concrete pass through them, with the ones that matter…
Pruning what your accounts have already collected about you
Securing an account and emptying it are different jobs. Most privacy advice only covers the first.
What encryption protects, and the exact point at which it stops
Three different things get called encryption and they defend against three different threats. None of them vouch for the person at the other end.
Which privacy trade-offs are real, and which ones are not
Some protections genuinely cost you convenience. Several of the ones people cite as too much hassle cost nothing at all.
Using a VPN without misreading what it is doing
If you already pay for one, here is how to use it competently — and how to notice the traffic that never enters the tunnel.
How a public profile ends up in a people-search listing
Data brokers do not hack anything. They combine public records with profiles that are public or viewable by everyone, and sell the result.
The security habits worth keeping, and three worth dropping
Several long-standing habits are now contradicted by the agencies that once implied them. Effort spent there is effort not spent elsewhere.
