Guides
Practical, step-by-step guides for readers who want to keep control over their own data, understand how platforms decide what they see, and keep publishing when someone would rather they didn’t. No jargon, no product placement, no affiliate links.
Available now
Your phone at a border or a protest
Rights and routines, not paranoia: what to decide before you travel or join a crowd, how lock screens and biometrics really behave, and what to do if someone asks you to unlock your device. Read the guide →
If your email falls, everything falls
Your inbox is the account that can reset all the others, which makes it the one worth an evening of real attention. The guide walks through a password you cannot remember, which kind of two-step verification is worth having, the recovery routes an attacker looks for, the forwarding rules and connected apps that survive a password change, what your provider can still read, splitting your addresses (including what a plus tag does and does not do), and the single habit that defeats almost every phishing attempt. Read the guide →
Hardening your browser in an afternoon
You do not need to become a security expert to stop most of the tracking that follows you around the web. The guide sets out seven decisions — the browser you open every morning, one content blocker instead of five, third-party tracking files, HTTPS-only mode and encrypted DNS, separate profiles for separate lives, what gets cleared when you quit, and your address bar and default search — plus an honest word on fingerprinting, three settings for your phone, and what a hardened browser still cannot fix. Read the guide →
Encrypted messaging without the myths
End-to-end encryption protects the words inside a message, not the record of who spoke to whom. The guide explains what Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage and Messenger actually do, why metadata is the part nobody advertises, how a cloud backup can quietly undo the encryption, and a twenty-minute setup that covers most people — plus four common myths and what the maths still cannot fix. Read the guide →
How to read a privacy policy in ten minutes
You do not have to read a privacy policy — you have to search one. The guide sets out a repeatable ten-minute method built on your browser’s find function: which words to search for, what a phrase like we do not sell your personal information actually permits, how to spot a retention period that is not a period at all, and what reading a policy can never tell you. Read the guide →
Protect Your Privacy with California’s DROP Tool
California’s Delete Request and Opt-out Platform lets you send a single deletion request to every data broker registered in the state. The guide explains who is eligible, what the request does and does not cover, and how to check whether brokers actually complied. Read the guide →
Hate “The Algorithm”? RSS Is One of the Tools You’ve Been Looking For
RSS lets you follow the sites you choose, in the order they published, with no ranking, no tracking and no account. The guide walks you through choosing a reader, importing your first feeds, and replacing most of what a timeline used to do for you. Read the guide →
In preparation
These are the guides we are working on next. If you have hands-on experience with any of them, we would like to hear from you.
- When a post disappears — telling the difference between removal, down-ranking and a plain technical fault, and how to document what happened.
- Talking to a journalist safely — choosing a channel, minimising traces, and what to expect once you send a document.
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