The following guide aims to be a one-stop resource for getting started with secure e-mail, hardened personal security & better privacy practices. First and foremost; the best measure you can take to keep your personal information from being misused is to never give it out in the first place. This can be good to keep in the back of your mind whenever you go to sign up to new apps or services in future, to save yourself the hassle of having to go through and delete or secure accounts.
This guide is divided into 3 sections;
This is a nearest step-by-step guide for getting set up with all the tools you will need to get going with better digital security & privacy.
Following the steps in this guide shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, but it can be a good idea to set off a rainy afternoon to get properly stuck in. You'll want to get this bit right first time.
You will need to decide on the right tools for you at each step, based on your budget & priorities. As such, this guide is not 100% complete so it's best to hop out and follow the official guides for the tools you have chosen when it comes to the nitty-gritty, before returning here to progress to the next step.
You should be able to follow this guide without needing to fork out for a paid subscription, though you may begin to encounter frustrating limits as you start to use these services more and more. Make sure to check out a service's pricing tiers before committing to them completely.
If you use my referral link you can try Proton's Mail Plus tier free for a month.
Proton's Unlimited tier (most expensive) encompasses secure e-mail & calendar, e-mail aliasing, a password manager, as well as a VPN and 500GB of encrypted storage for €12.99 per month, or as low as €7.99 a month if you subscribe for 2 years.
If you have paid for a VPN and/or password manager before, then this represents a pretty good deal, since for a similar price you also get encrypted e-mail, aliasing and storage, with more features on the way. Paying for these services is certainly something you should consider, at least if you don't want to self-host, as they will form the backbone of your online security.
If you have 3 or more users and can take advantage of their family plan then this gets even more affordable as it can cost as little as €3.33 per user a month if you have the maximum of 6 users.
Get started here
Once you've gotten set up with the tools you'll need, the process with deleting & securing all your accounts can begin. Here, you will delete accounts you no longer need, then update your credentials, as well as privacy settings, on accounts you still use.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. It can take anything from a few days to several weeks to get through all your accounts, dependent on how many you have and how much you can get through per day. This is, mercifully, a one-time process.
Aim to get through it in chunks; do all of the accounts under a letter of the alphabet each time you sit down to attack it, or try for 10 accounts a day, or whatever you find achievable.
The most important thing is to keep going; better that it take 6 months but you get through the list than getting 10% of the way through and giving up.
This section includes steps to iterate over for each account individually.
Find it here
Now that you've got more of a handle on your account security, you can start to take back control of your own data. Here you can find privacy-friendly & open source alternatives to services from companies like Google & Facebook to try to reduce the amount of data Big Tech companies keep on you.