Hey guys, I'm a newly college student who's going into the field of Information Technology; specifically Information Security and Linux Systems. |||
I've been trying to learn as much as I can about how to keep your online identity as secret as possible. I will leave some of my important steps to staying secure in your privacy below. |||
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What do you think is important in maintaining anonymity and privacy? What applications do you use? Scripts? Browsers? Emails?

1. Get rid of Windows. Switch to a very secure Linux or Debian OS. My personally favorite is Parrot OS, with Kali being a close second. |||
2. Get rid of Google. Replace Google Search Engine with DuckDuckGo and replace Chrome with Firefox. Not only does this have security benefits, but your Firefox will take up less resources. |||
3. Stop using Gmail and other mainstream emailing services. They are unsecure and can compromise your identity. There are a few anonymous alternatives. If you want a free alternative, use Disroot.org. My favorite paid option is secure-email.org. |||
4. Always use a VPN. It's important to cover your IP address. Though it may not seem very important, something as simple as an IP can be used in conjunction with Pen Testing software to reveal critical information about you. Personally, I use AnonSurf which runs all traffic through the Tor Relay. |||
5. Never EVER give out any personally information online. Even things as simple as a first and last name can be used to track you. The safest thing I've learned is to get rid of social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, ect. If you do use one or more of these, use an Alias or just a first name.
6. Learn to spot fishy websites. Use extensions on your browser such as: DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, ImageBlock, CSSDisabler and my personal favorite and probably most important, NoScript. These will help negate most attacks from unknown or malicious websites as well as give you a general idea on what to look out for on websites. |||
Cookies, Trackers, and scripts for ads and other trackers can go a long way, so make sure that they are disabled. Also make sure that in your browser's privacy settings, you set it to NEVER remember history, and automatically clear cookies, cache, saved passwords, ect.

Hey! I'm a fan of keeping my privacy too, and I followed many of your recommendations or was already doing them. There's only 1 thing that I can think of that I do to keep me safer which you haven't named yet, and that is tweaking my Firefox settings to super safe, enabling all the blocking functions that the settings offer.

Thanks a lot for this post! I find this terribly interesting, and I will try to follow your advice from now on for sure. After all, privacy is important. As a certain Edward once stated:

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

I wish you luck with your studies! I bet you'll be a great student :)

bumping because this is relevant to my interests... just wondering what people here think about google chrome as a web browser? Is Firefox actually more secure? Or would you recommend switching to something else completely?

mass bump.
this is really helpful.

Bumping this as well
Thank you OP these are some helpful tips. Been using duckduckgo too

There is no true anonymity on the net unfortunately. Regardless of how secure you make your computer secure, if you have a phone you are already being tracked. Android is owned by google so...

But if we're talking browsers, TOR is the most secure browser availible, even if its full of CP. (Also VPN's help)
Yh linux is the most anonymous OS but its still very vunerable without protection. Antivirus can track malware that tracks you.

But yh my point remains is that true anonymity on the net is long gone.