Most people hear the word "privacy" and picture some guy in a cabin smashing his iPhone with a hammer and writing his memoir on a typewriter. Cute. Also nonsense.
You can answer email, write proposals, edit video, and run a small business without handing your entire life over to Google, Apple, and Microsoft. You don't need to disappear. You need a different set of tools — and a weekend to set them up.
This is Level 1. The basic privacy stack for regular people on regular computers. Freelancers, small business owners, students, office workers — anyone tired of being tracked who still needs to get actual work done.
01 What this protects against (and what it doesn't)
Be honest about the threat model first. Otherwise you'll either oversell it to your friends or undersell it to yourself when something goes sideways.
- ✅ Ad tech and data brokers profiling every click you make
- ✅ Big Tech vendor lock-in across email, files, and apps
- ✅ Casual surveillance by services that monetize you
- ✅ Most third-party tracking baked into modern websites
- ❌ A nation-state adversary specifically targeting you
- ❌ A subpoena, court order, or warrant served on a provider
- ❌ Someone with physical access to your unlocked devices
- ❌ Bad operational habits that leak data on their own
If you're a journalist working in a hostile country or a target of state-level surveillance, you need more than this article. For everyone else — most readers here — Level 1 cuts roughly 90% of the surveillance you're currently feeding for free.
02 Your base — Linux Mint
Instead of Windows or macOS, you run Linux Mint. A free, user-friendly operating system (OS) that looks like a normal desktop, not a hacker movie set.
No built-in ad telemetry. No forced Microsoft account. You control updates and software. You can browse the web, plug in printers, open files, and do all the usual stuff — without the baked-in surveillance and Microsoft asking for your firstborn.
If Linux feels like too big a jump on day one, fine. Run the rest of the stack on your existing OS for now and switch the base later. Progress, not perfection.
03 Office work — LibreOffice instead of Microsoft 365
For documents, spreadsheets, and slides, you use LibreOffice. It replaces Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It runs offline. It opens and saves to .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. It doesn't phone home to feed an ad company. It's free.
Reports, invoices, contracts, proposals — all of it stays on your drive. Not streamed to a corporate data center "for your convenience." If you specifically need real-time document collaboration (the one thing LibreOffice doesn't do well), look at CryptPad — encrypted, browser-based, and doesn't read your files.
04 Browser and search
Your browser is where most tracking happens. Fix this first. Use Mozilla Firefox as your daily driver — strong tracking protection, a massive privacy extension ecosystem, and not owned by an ad giant.
If you want to go a step harder without changing how you browse, look at LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser, or Brave. All hardened forks or alternatives with stricter defaults out of the box.
The two add-ons that earn their keep:
- uBlock Origin — the gold standard for ad and tracker blocking
- Privacy Badger — behavior-based tracker blocking from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
For search, ditch Google as your default and pick one of these:
- DuckDuckGo — easy switch, results good enough for daily use
- Startpage — Google results, anonymized at the source
- Brave Search — independent index, no third-party tracking
- Qwant — European, privacy-first by default
You'll still "google stuff" all day. You'll just stop feeding the Google machine while you do it.
05 Email and messaging — Proton Mail and Signal
Move important email to Proton Mail(or another privacy-focused provider like Tutanota). End-to-end encryption between Proton users, with PGP support for outsiders. No inbox scanning to build an ad profile. Custom domains for businesses. Based in Switzerland and governed by Swiss privacy law.
The honest version: when you email someone on Gmail from Proton, that email isn't end-to-end encrypted unless you've set up PGP. Proton encrypts what it can. Gmail still sees its own side of the conversation. That's email — not a Proton problem, an internet problem. Keep your old Gmail for logins and junk. Route real conversations through Proton. Migrate slowly.
For private chat and calls, use Signal. End-to-end encrypted by default, no ads, no data sales, runs on phone and desktop, fully open source. You don't have to convert everyone overnight — start with the people who already have Signal installed. The network builds itself.
06 Creative work and business analytics
If you make content, you don't need cloud-tethered tools that phone home every five seconds. On Linux Mint:
- Kdenlive or Shotcut — video editing strong enough for YouTube, training videos, and social clips
- GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program) or Krita — images and graphics
All run locally. Your raw footage and project files stay on your drive — not auto-uploaded to someone else's server "for your convenience."
If you run a website, you still need to know what's working. You don't need to surveil your visitors to find out. Instead of Google Analytics, use Plausible Analytics or Matomo. Page views, referrers, top pages — the stuff you actually use. No creepy cross-site tracking. You control the data, especially if self-hosted. And both are friendlier to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance — your lawyer will be happier.
07 The quiet upgrades
A handful of small switches that punch way above their weight. Boring in the best way — set them once, forget them.
- Password manager — KeePassXC (fully local) or Bitwarden (open source, self-hostable)
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) — Aegis on Android, or 2FAS / Raivo on iOS, instead of SMS codes
- Encrypted backups — external drive plus the built-in backup tool, with full-disk encryption turned on
- File sync — Syncthing for direct device-to-device sync with no cloud middleman
- Cloud storage — Proton Drive, Tresorit, or self-hosted Nextcloud instead of Google Drive or Dropbox
- Calendar — Proton Calendar, or self-hosted alternatives, instead of Google Calendar
- Domain Name System (DNS) — point your router or device at Quad9, Mullvad DNS, or NextDNS to block trackers and malware before they ever load
08 Don't forget your phone
Your phone is the single biggest leak in your life. A desktop privacy stack with a Big Tech phone is like locking the front door and leaving the back gate open.
You don't need a hardened phone at Level 1. But you should at minimum: install Signal and use it as your default messenger; install Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin and ditch Chrome; audit app permissions (most apps don't need your contacts, location, or microphone); turn off the advertising ID in system settings; and use the Proton Mail and Proton Calendar apps for any accounts you've already migrated.
Level 2 gets into GrapheneOS and de-Googled phones. Not today.
09 What you're NOT doing at Level 1
To set the right expectations — here's what's not on the table at this stage. All of this is Level 2 territory:
If you run a small business, don't cold-quit Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 on a Tuesday afternoon. Set up the new tool in parallel. Forward important traffic to it. Export your data from the old service (Google Takeout and Microsoft's export tools both exist). Update logins, contacts, and signatures. Keep the old account on read-only forwarding for a few months. Then delete. Boring? Yes. Survives an audit and doesn't cost you a client? Also yes.