How to improve your digital security
Want to control your own digital security? There鈥檚 a wide array of options for secure messaging apps, email services and browsers that help you do-it-yourself.
Privacy-conscious search engines:聽
, a search engine that does not profile users or personalize search results to their users. There are searches per day on the site.
, a search engine that uses Google search results but allows users to open all search results via proxy, is another option.
Encrypted email services:聽
is an anonymous email provider based on the Tor network (which is required to use this email service).
is an encrypted email service once used by Edward Snowden that opted to shut down instead of complying to a US government request to hand over its encryption keys. It鈥檚 now back online, and plans to launch end-to-end encryption later this year.
is an automatically end-to-end encrypted email service with servers based in Switzerland that doesn鈥檛 require users to hand over any personal information to create an account.
is a Switzerland-based groupware service and web-based email.
is another Swiss email service that provides IP anonymity, spam and virus protection and disposable addresses hosted at a personalized Swiss domain name.
is a Sweden-based end-to-end encrypted email service.
Other end-to-end encrypted platforms:聽
is a service that says it automatically encrypts messages and does not have access to their contents. Signal has earned praise from anti-surveillance activists Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras.
has also adopted make the same end-to-end encryption protocol used by Signal the default for all communications on the service.
Though it鈥檚 not a default, you can also opt-in to end-to-end encryption by going to your settings and turning on the 鈥淪ecret Conversations鈥� feature, which allows users to send secret messages from one device.
also automatically deletes messages from user phones as soon as they are read.
has a similar timed deletion feature.
, another end-to-end encrypted messaging program, allows for encrypted chats across multiple networks for Mac users.
And if you want to encrypt your browser yourself, you can install , which keeps users anonymous using hidden relay servers.
also has domain and URL filtering systems, and is set up as a more secure version of Chrome or Firefox.
