You are being watched. It has become a fact that private and state sponsored organizations are spying on us. privacytools.io is here to give you the knowledge and tools to defend yourself against global mass surveillance.

"Privacy? I don't have anything to hide."

Over the last 16 months, as I've debated this issue around the world, every single time somebody has said to me, "I don't really worry about invasions of privacy because I don't have anything to hide." I always say the same thing to them. I get out a pen, I write down my email address. I say, "Here's my email address. What I want you to do when you get home is email me the passwords to all of your email accounts, not just the nice, respectable work one in your name, but all of them, because I want to be able to just troll through what it is you're doing online, read what I want to read and publish whatever I find interesting. After all, if you're not a bad person, if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide." Not a single person has taken me up on that offer. Glenn Greenwald in Why privacy matters - TED Talk

VPN providers with extra layers of privacy - No Affiliates

All providers listed here are operating outside the USA, accepting Bitcoin and using OpenVPN. The table is sortable.

VPN Service Jurisdiction Logs Encoding Bitcoin Servers P2P Price / Year Warrant Canary

Proxy.sh Seychelles No RSA-4096 / AES-256 Accepted 288 Allowed $ 90 Statement

IVPN.net Gibraltar No RSA-4096 / AES-256 Accepted 15 Allowed $ 100 Statement

NordVPN.com Panama No RSA-2048 / AES-256 Accepted 52 Allowed $ 48 Statement

hide.me Malaysia No RSA-4096 / AES-256 Accepted 27 Allowed $ 65 Statement

AirVPN.org Italy No RSA-4096 / AES-256 Accepted 76 Allowed 54 € Statement

Mullvad.net Sweden No RSA-2048 / AES-256 Accepted 23 Allowed 60 € Statement

Cryptostorm.is Iceland No SHA-512 / AES-256 Accepted 13 Allowed $ 52 Statement

Perfect-Privacy.com Switzerland No RSA-4096 / AES-256 Accepted 40 Allowed 150 € Statement

FrootVPN.com Sweden No RSA-2048 / AES-256 Accepted 27 Allowed $ 35 Statement

Note: Using a VPN provider will not make you anonymous. But it will give you a better privacy. A VPN is not a tool for illegal activities. Don't rely on a "no log" policy.

Our VPN Provider Criteria

Operating outside the USA or other Five Eyes countries.

Uses OpenVPN as an encryption method.

File-Sharing (P2P) is tolerated on selected servers.

Accepts Bitcoin, cash, debit cards, cash cards as a payment method.

We're not affiliated with any of the above listed VPN providers. This way can give you honest recommendations.

Related VPN information

What is a warrant canary?

A warrant canary is a posted document stating that an organization has not received any secret subpoenas during a specific period of time. If this document fails to be updated during the specified time then the user is to assume that the service has received such a subpoena and should stop using the service.

Global Mass Surveillance - The Fourteen Eyes

An exclusive club since 1946: The five countries that don’t spy on each other. Third party partners like The Nine Eyes or The Fourteen Eyes are not automatically exempt from intelligence targeting by The Five Eyes. According to an internal NSA document leaked by Snowden, "We (the NSA) can, and often do, target the signals of most 3rd party foreign partners." (Source). Third parties are both a partner and a target of NSA Surveillance.

Five Eyes 1. Australia 2. Canada 3. New Zealand 4. United Kingdom 5. United States of America Nine Eyes 6. Denmark 7. France 8. Netherlands 9. Norway Fourteen Eyes 10. Belgium 11. Germany 12. Italy 13. Spain 14. Sweden Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

Privacy-Conscious Email Providers - No Affiliates

All providers listed here are operating outside the USA. The table is sortable.

Email Service Since Server Location Storage Free Price / Year Bitcoin Domain Info

Tutanota.com 2011 Germany 1000 MB Yes Donation Accepted No Open Source

OpenMailBox.org 2003 France 1000 MB Yes Donation Accepted No Easy signup

Autistici.org 2001 Iceland

Norway

Netherlands Unlimited Yes Donation Accepted No Request account

ProtonMail.ch 2013 Switzerland 500 MB Yes Donation Accepted No Request invite

Posteo.de 2009 Germany 2000 MB No 12 € No No Cash payment

Runbox.com 1999 Norway 1000 MB No $ 19.95 No Yes Free 30-day trial

Neomailbox.com 2003 Switzerland 1000 MB No $ 49.95 Accepted Yes 30 day money back guarantee

KolabNow.com 2010 Switzerland 2048 MB No $ 60 Accepted Yes Groupware

Related information:

Browser Recommandation

Best Choice for Privacy: Firefox Firefox is the best choice for most users. The browser is fast, reliable, open source and respects your privacy. Don't forget to adjust the settings according to our recommendations: WebRTC and about:config and get the privacy addons. Download: www.firefox.com Available for: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android. Anonymity Network: Tor Browser Tor Browser is your choice if you need an extra layer of anonymity. It's a modified version of Firefox, it comes with pre-installed privacy addons, encryption and an advanced proxy. Download: www.torproject.org Available for: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you really don't like Firefox: Chromium Firefox is not for you? You can give Chromium a try. Most privacy addons we have listed are also available for Chromium. Make sure you do research and take care about all privacy settings yourself. We don't recommend the use of Chromium. Download: www.chromium.org Available for: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android.

WebRTC IP Leak Test - Is your IP address leaking?

WebRTC is a new communication protocol that relies on JavaScript that can leak your actual IP address from behind your VPN.

While software like NoScript prevents this, it's probably a good idea to block this protocol directly as well, just to be safe.

Test your Browser now

How to disable WebRTC in Firefox?

In short: Set "media.peerconnection.enabled" to "false" in "about:config".

Explained:

Enter "about:config" in the firefox address bar and press enter. Press the button "I'll be careful, I promise!" Search for "media.peerconnection.enabled" Double click the entry, the column "Value" should now be "false" Done. Do the WebRTC leak test again.

If you want to make sure every single WebRTC related setting is really disabled change these settings:

media.peerconnection.turn.disable = true media.peerconnection.use_document_iceservers = false media.peerconnection.video.enabled = false media.peerconnection.identity.timeout = 1

Now you can be 100% sure WebRTC is disabled.

Test your Browser again

How to fix the WebRTC Leak in Google Chrome?

There is no known working solution, only a plugin that is easily circumvented. Please use Firefox instead.

What about other browsers?

Chrome on iOS, Internet Explorer and Safari does not implement WebRTC yet. But we recommend using Firefox on all devices.

Firefox: Privacy Related "about:config" Tweaks

This is a collection of privacy related about:config tweaks. We'll show you how to enhance the privacy of your Firefox browser.

Preparation:

Enter "about:config" in the firefox address bar and press enter. Press the button "I'll be careful, I promise!" Follow the instructions below...

Getting started:

network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferrer = false

Disable referrer headers.

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

This is Mozilla’s new built in tracking protection.

geo.enabled = false

Disables geolocation

browser.safebrowsing.enabled = false

Disable Google Safe Browsing and phishing protection. Security risk, but privacy improvement.

browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled = false

Disable Google Safe Browsing malware checks. Security risk, but privacy improvement.

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled = false

Disable that websites can get notifications if you copy, paste, or cut something from a web page, and it lets them know which part of the page had been selected.

dom.event.contextmenu.enabled = false

Disables website control over rightclick context menu.

geo.wifi.logging.enabled = false

Disables firefox logging geolocation requests

network.cookie.alwaysAcceptSessionCookies = false

Disables acceptance of session cookies

network.cookie.cookieBehavior = 2

Disable cookies

0 = accept all cookies by default

1 = only accept from the originating site (block third party cookies)

2 = block all cookies by default

network.cookie.lifetimePolicy = 2

cookies are deleted at the end of the session

0 = Accept cookies normally

1 = Prompt for each cookie

2 = Accept for current session only

3 = Accept for N days

network.dnsCacheEntries = 100

Number of cached DNS entries. Lower number = More requests but less data stored.

network.dnsCacheExpiration = 60

Time DNS entries are cached in seconds.

places.history.enabled = false

Disables recording of visited websites

browser.formfill.enable = false

Disables saving of formdata

browser.cache.disk.enable = false

Disables caching on hardrive

browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl = false

Disables caching for ssl connections

browser.cache.memory.enable = false

Disables caching in memory

browser.cache.offline.enable = false

Disables offline cache

Source and thanks to user aboutconfig_tips from reddit.com

Excellent Firefox Privacy Addons

Improve your privacy with these excellent Firefox addons.

HTTPS Everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure. Encrypt the web: Install HTTPS Everywhere today. HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Block Ads with Adblock Edge or uBlock

Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements and trackers across the web with filter subscriptions, without sponsored ads whitelist.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

uBlock is an lightweight and efficient blocker: easy on memory and CPU footprint. The extension has no monetization strategy and development is volunteered. Available for: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chromium.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/

Adblock Edge and uBlock are both great addons, choose between them but AdBlock Plus is not recommended because they show "acceptable ads". The system behind that white list is lacking transparency.

Request Policy

Many websites integrate features which let other websites track you, such as Facebook Like Buttons or Google Analytics. Request Policy gives you control over the requests that websites make to other websites. This gives you greater and more fine grained control over the information that you leak online.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/

NoScript Security Suite

Highly customizable plugin to selectively allow Javascript, Java, and Flash to run only on websites you trust. Not for casual users, it requires technical knowledge to configure.

https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/noscript/

Instant Messenger: Telegram - The Best Choice

If you are currently using an Instant Messenger like WhatsApp, Viber, LINE or Threema you should switch to Telegram.

It's free. No subscription fees. It's Open Source. No Ads. It's available for:

iPhone / iPad (iOS)

Android

Windows Phone

PC

Mac OS X

Linux

Browser (Web)

Messages are heavily encrypted and can self-destruct.

Servers are spread worldwide for security and speed.

Open API and protocol free for everyone.

Access your messages from multiple devices.

No limits on the size of your media and chats.

It's pretty, simple and lightweight.

Quotes

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under. Edward Snowden in The Guardian

We all need places where we can go to explore without the judgmental eyes of other people being cast upon us, only in a realm where we’re not being watched can we really test the limits of who we want to be. It’s really in the private realm where dissent, creativity and personal exploration lie. Glenn Greenwald in Huffington Post

Please participate with suggestions and constructive criticism

It's important for a website like privacytools.io to be up-to-date. Keep an eye on software updates of the applications listed here. Follow recent news about providers that are recommended here. We try our best to keep up but we're not perfect and the internet is changing fast. So if you find an error, or you think a provider should not be listed here, or a qualified service provider is missing or a browser plugin is not the best choice anymore or anything else...

Talk to us please. Join our subreddit and start a discussion. This is a community project and we're aiming to deliver the best information available for a better privacy. We are also using /r/privacy and /r/VPN. Thank you for participating.

Recommended Resources

Surveillance Self-Defense by EFF Modern technology has given the powerful new abilities to eavesdrop and collect data on innocent people. Surveillance Self-Defense is EFF's guide to defending yourself and your friends from surveillance by using secure technology and developing careful practices. More: https://ssd.eff.org/ PRISM Break Help make mass surveillance of entire populations uneconomical! We all have a right to privacy, which you can exercise today by encrypting your communications and ending your reliance on proprietary services. More: https://prism-break.org/ The Ultimate Privacy Guide Privacy is a precious but endangered commodity, and by implementing at least some of the ideas we have covered you not only help to protect your own privacy, but also make a valuable contribution to conserving it for everyone. After all, if everyone encrypted their online life, where would the NSA be then? https://www.bestvpn.com/the-ultimate-privacy-guide/

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privacytools.io is a socially motivated web site that provides information for protecting your data security and privacy.