pluja/awesome-privacy

List of free, open source and privacy respecting services and alternatives to privative services.

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• 2FA
• Analytics
• Android
  • Android App Store
  • Android Debloat Tools
  • Android Dialer
  • Android File Manager
  • Android Gallery
  • Android Keyboard
  • Android Launcher
• Artificial Intelligence
  • ChatGPT
  • AI Coding
  • Text To Speech
  • Speech To Text
  • Image Generation
• Bookmarking
  • Book and web annotations
• Captchas
• Calendar
• Commenting Engines (disqus)
• Cloaking
• Cloud Storage
• Creator Tools
• Databases
• Dating Apps
• Design Tools
• Developer Tools
  • IDEs
• Domains & Hosting
• Download Manager
• Ebooks
• Encryption
• File Management and Sharing
• Fitness and Health
  • Fitness trackers
  • Food
  • Menstrual cycle trackers
  • Medical health
• Fonts
• Forms
• Games
  • Mario Kart
  • Minecraft
  • Pokémon
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
• Home Assistants
• Instant Messaging
• Link in Bio Tools
• Link Shorteners
• Location tracking
• Mail Services
• Maps and Navigation
• Media Streaming Platforms
  • Video and Audio
  • Audio
  • Podcasts
• Music Recognition (Shazam-like)
• Notes and Tasks
• Office
• Online Phone Providers (SMS)
• Operating Systems
  • Android
  • PC / MacOS
  • Smart TV
• Password Managers
• Pastebin and Secret Sharing
• Payments
• Personal Finances
  • Full Featured Financial Management
  • Budget Management
  • Shared Expenses
  • Others
  • Portfolio Trackers
• Photo Editing and Management
• Photo Storage
• Privacy Tools
• Remote Access and Control
• Routers
• RSS Readers
• Search Engines
• Social Networks and Platforms
  • Blogging platforms (Medium / Blogger)
  • Fandom
  • IMDb
  • Imgur
  • Instagram
  • Quora
  • Reddit
  • Streaming Platforms (Twitch)
  • TikTok
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
• Screen Recording
• Teamworking Tools
• Translation
• Uncategorized
• Utilities
• Version Control
• Video and Audio Conferencing
• Video Editing
• Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
• Web Browser
  • Browser Addons
  • Browser Sync
• Whistleblowing

⛔ Avoid using apps that won't let you export your keys easily.

• Authy
• Google Authenticator

✅ Instead use

• 🤖 Aegis - A free, secure and open source app for Android to manage your 2-step verification tokens. Supports variety of imports from other apps (Google Authenticator, Authy etc.), vault encryption and exporting keys (plaintext or encrypted).
• ente Auth - A free, cross platform, end-to-end encrypted and open source app for managing your 2-step verification tokens. From the makers of ente Photos, and uses the same battle tested infrastructure. Needs an ente.io account.
• Owky 💀 - Free and Open Source Two-Factor Authenticator for IOS users.
• 🤖 FreeOTPPlus - Enhanced fork of FreeOTP-Android providing a feature-rich 2FA authenticator.
• 🤖 Stratum - Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) client for Android + Wear OS.
• Proton Authenticator - Proton Authenticator is an open source and end-to-end encrypted 2FA app that’s simple and free to use.
• 2FAS Auth - Open source TOTP authenticator for iOS and Android with a companion browser extension and no account required. GPL-3.0 licensed.

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⛔ Avoid any analytics service that comes from Google, Facebook, Microsoft or any private service. These kind of analytics hurt user privacy.

✅ Instead use

• Ackee - Self-hosted website analytics.
• Aptabase - Open-source, privacy-first and simple analytics for mobile and desktop apps.
• Cabin - Privacy-first, carbon conscious web analytics.
• GoatCounter - Privacy aware, lightweight and open-source analytics platform.
• Matomo - Google Analytics alternative that protects your data and your customers' privacy.
• Nullitics - Zero-effort open-source cheap analytics.
• Pirsch - Pirsch is a simple, privacy-friendly, open-source alternative to Google Analytics — lightweight, cookie-free and easily integrated into any website or backend.
• Plausible - Simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.
• Shynet - Modern, privacy-friendly, and detailed web analytics that works without cookies or JS.
• Swetrix - Privacy-focused, fully cookieless and opensource (and selfhostable) web-analytics service.
• Umami - A simple, fast, website analytics alternative to Google Analytics.
• Unidentified Analytics - Naive ip-based tracking that works everywhere (web, command-line, email, etc). No account required. Developer friendly.
• Rybbit - Open-source and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics that is 10x more intuitive.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Play Store

✅ Instead use

• F-Droid - F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.
  • Droid-ify - Lightweight F-Droid client with Material UI.
  • Aurora Droid 💀 - Aurora Droid is a modern FOSS client for F-Droid.
  • Foxy Droid 💀 - Unofficial F-Droid client in the style of the classic one.
• FossDroid - Fossdroid's aim is to promote free and open source apps on the Android platform: newest, trendiest and the most popular ones.
• SkyDroid 💀 - Decentralized App Store for Android
• Obtainium - Get app updates directly from the source.
• Accrescent - A novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability.

• Aurora Store - Aurora Store is an open-source alternative Google Play Store frontend client with privacy and modern design in mind.

⛔ Avoid

• ADB AppControl - A simple adb wrapper with a terrible privacy policy to collect things like device information and what applications you install/uninstall.

✅ Instead use

• Universal Android Debloater Next Generation - Cross-platform GUI written in Rust using ADB to debloat non-rooted android devices. Improve your privacy, the security and battery life of your device.

⛔ Avoid

Third-party dialers found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.

✅ Instead use

• Fossify Phone - A handy phone call manager with phonebook, number blocking and multi-SIM support.

⛔ Avoid

Preinstalled file managers and third-party file manager apps found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.

✅ Instead use

• Amaze File Manager - Simple and attractive Material Design file manager for Android.
• Material Files - An open source Material Design file manager, for Android 5.0+.
• Ghost Commander - Dual-panel file manager.
• 🤖 Fossify File Manager - Open source file manager for Android with no ads, no tracking, and no internet permission. GPL-3.0 licensed.

⛔ Avoid

• GBoard (Google)
• SwiftKey

✅ Instead use

• AnySoftKeyboard - The only Android keyboard you'll ever need. Free as in speech and Free as in beer.
• FlorisBoard - FlorisBoard is a free and open-source keyboard for Android 6.0+ devices. It aims at being modern, user-friendly and customizable while fully respecting your privacy. Currently in early-beta state.
• Futo Keyboard - A modern keyboard that respects your privacy and security, with features such as offline voice input, swipe typing and smart autocorrect.
• Heliboard - A privacy-conscious and customizable open-source keyboard, based on AOSP / OpenBoard with many additional features and improvements, including support for custom dictionaries, themes, and glide typing.
• Indic Keyboard - Indic Keyboard is a versatile keyboard for Android users who wish to use Indic and Indian languages to type messages, compose emails and generally prefer to use them in addition to English on their phone.
• OpenBoard 💀 - OpenBoard is a 100% foss keyboard based on AOSP, with no dependency on Google binaries, that respects your privacy. It is no longer updated, but still works.
• Simple Keyboard - Simply keyboard and nothing more.

Your phone gallery is a deeply personal aspect of your life, it may contain images and videos that capture intimate moments, locations, and people important to you. Protecting its privacy is essential to prevent misuse of this information, not only for you, but it also ensures the privacy of friends and family captured in these photos, who may not consent to having their images shared.

⛔ Avoid

• Google Photos has privacy issues. They collect a lot of data about you, which you can see in their privacy policy. Google can scan your photos and might flag them for different reasons, as shown in this incident. They also use your photos to improve their AI technology.
• Amazon Photos also has similar privacy problems. Like Google Photos, it gathers a lot of information from your photo gallery. You can see a bit of what kind of data they collect in their examples list.
• Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. Gallery

✅ Instead use

• Aves - Beautiful gallery and metadata explorer app, built for Android with Flutter.
• Fossify Gallery - Fork of Simple Gallery. Browse your memories without any interruptions with this photo and video gallery.

⛔ Avoid

Third-party launchers found on the play store. They may contain ads/trackers and may ask for unnecessary permissions.

✅ Instead use

• Lawnchair - No clever tagline needed.
• OpenLauncher 💀 - Customizable and Open Source Launcher for Android.
• KISS - Lightning fast, open-source, < 200kb Android launcher.
• Olauncher - Minimal AF (ad-free) launcher app for Android.
• Pie Launcher - Android home screen launcher that uses a dynamic pie menu instead of fixed positioned icons.
• Bliss Launcher - The default launcher of the /e/ Android-based OS. It allows users to easily create and browse group of apps and it displays notification badges on app icons.

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When using cloud-based AI services, the data you input is often collected and stored by the service provider. This may include not only the content of your requests but also metadata, such as timestamps or IP addresses. Third-party servers may grant access to your data to their employees, partners, or even other users, depending on their privacy policies. Data may be used for various purposes, including model training, research, or even marketing activities. Your requests to a third-party AI service may be tied to your user information and payment details, linking your data to your identity.

• Jan - Jan is an open source alternative to ChatGPT that runs 100% offline on your computer.
• llama.cpp - Inference of Facebook's LLaMA model in pure C/C++ so it can run locally on a CPU.
• LocalAI - Self-hosted, community-driven simple local OpenAI-compatible API written in go. Can be used as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI, running on CPU with consumer-grade hardware.
• ollama - Get up and running with Llama 2 and other large language models locally.
• PasteGuard - Privacy proxy for LLM APIs that masks PII and secrets before they reach cloud providers. Self-hosted, OpenAI-compatible, and restores original data in responses.
• Shimmy - Privacy-focused AI inference server with OpenAI API compatibility, zero cloud dependencies, and local model processing.
• Tinfoil - Verifiably private AI Chat and OpenAI-compatible inference in the cloud. Uses NVIDIA confidential computing and open source code pinned to a transparency log for end-to-end verifiability.
• Open WebUI - Self-hosted web interface for Ollama and other local models that gives you a private ChatGPT-style chat. BSD-3 licensed.
• LibreChat - Self-hosted chat interface that connects many AI models behind one private UI you control. Open source, MIT licensed.

• Continue - Open-source autopilot for VS Code and JetBrains—the easiest way to code with any LLM
• Cline - Open source AI coding for VSCode. See every decision and use your own models.
  • Zoo Code - Cline fork with some improvements; community successor to the discontinued Roo Code.
• OpenCode - The open source coding agent. Connect local models or any providers of your choice.
• Aider - Terminal AI pair programmer that edits code in your local git repository using your own API keys. Apache-2.0 licensed.
• Tabby - Self-hosted code completion assistant that runs on your own hardware as an alternative to GitHub Copilot. Apache-2.0 licensed.

• Kokoro FastAPI - Dockerized FastAPI wrapper for Kokoro-82M text-to-speech model w/CPU, ONNX and NVIDIA GPU support, handling, and auto-stitching.
• Piper - A fast, local neural text to speech system that sounds great and is optimized for the Raspberry Pi 4.
• Espeak - eSpeak NG is an open source speech synthesizer that supports more than hundred languages and accents. Voices will sound rather robotic.
• Chatterbox - Local text-to-speech model with voice cloning that runs entirely on your own machine. Open source, MIT licensed.

• Models

  • Moonshine - Fast and accurate automatic speech recognition (ASR) for edge devices.
  • OpenAI Whisper - Whisper is a general-purpose speech recognition model that can be run locally offline. It can transcribe audio from and to multiple languages.
    • whisper.cpp - High-performance inference of OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) model.
    • faster-whisper - Reimplementation of Whisper using CTranslate2 that transcribes locally up to four times faster. MIT licensed.
  • ParakeetTDT - Efficient audio transcription. Convert speech to text with unprecedented speed and accuracy using NVIDIA advanced AI speech recognition model.

• Apps and services

  • OpenWhispr - Voice-to-text dictation and productivity app with AI agents, meeting transcription, notes, and local/cloud speech recognition. Privacy-first and available cross-platform. Open source alternative to wisprflow.
  • Sasayaki - Tiny android dictation app that turns speech into clear writing.
  • Speaches - OpenAI API-compatible server supporting streaming transcription, translation, and speech generation.

• ComfyUI - ComfyUI lets you execute advanced image generation pipelines using an advanced interface. Available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• InvokeAI - Generate and create stunning visual media using the latest AI-driven technologies locally.
• SwarmUI - Local web interface for Stable Diffusion and other diffusion models, built on a ComfyUI backend. MIT licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• Evernote Web Clipper - Bad privacy policy. Apps have many trackers and require too many permissions.

✅ Instead use

• 42links - Open-source, self-hosted, minimalist bookmark storage service.
• Floccus - Sync your bookmarks privately across browsers and devices.
• Grimoire - Modern, open source, self-hosted bookmark manager.
• Karakeep - (previously Hoarder) Open source "Bookmark Everything" app that uses AI for automatically tagging the content you throw at it.
• LinkAce - Open source, self-hosted bookmark archive that monitors and organizes your saved links (GPL-3.0).
• LinkDing - Open source, self-hosted bookmark manager built to be minimal, fast, and easy to run with Docker (MIT).
• Shiori - Open source, self-hosted bookmark manager written in Go, usable as a CLI or web app (MIT).
• Wallabag - Open-source, optionally self-hosted, read it later server. Provides paid hosted service with privacy in mind.
• Linkwarden - Self-hosted bookmark manager that saves and archives full copies of the pages you collect (AGPL-3.0).
• Readeck - Single-binary self-hosted read-it-later app that saves and archives articles for offline reading (AGPL-3.0).

• Blasta - A collaborative bookmarks manager for organizing online content.
• Hypothesis - Annotate the web, with anyone, anywhere.
• Kobuddy - Get your Kobo e-reader device bookmarks and annotations in a .txt file.

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⛔ Avoid

Google captchas use cookies to track users and rank their IPs.

• Google reCAPTCHA
• hCaptcha

✅ Instead use

• Altcha.org - Free, open-source and self-hosted CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work mechanism.
• mCaptcha (repo) - An open-source CAPTCHA system with seamless UX. mCaptcha uses SHA256 based proof-of-work (PoW) to rate limit users.
• Private Captcha - Privacy-first and self-hosted Proof-of-Work CAPTCHA alternative, made in EU.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Calendar - Tracks your events, integrates with Google's advertising ecosystem, and your data is stored on Google's servers without end-to-end encryption.

✅ Instead use

• 🤖 Etar - Open-source calendar app for Android that works with any CalDAV server.
• 🤖 Fossify Calendar - Simple offline calendar app for Android with widget support.
• 🤖 KashCal - Offline-first Android calendar with iCloud/CalDAV sync, full-text search, recurring events, and home screen widget. Apache 2.0 licensed.
• Nextcloud Calendar - Calendar app for Nextcloud with CalDAV support. Self-hostable.
• Proton Calendar - End-to-end encrypted calendar from Proton. Part of the Proton privacy ecosystem.

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⛔ Avoid

• Disqus - Many trackers are in their sites. Disqus collects (as per their Privacy Policy): IP address, unique Cookie ID, Device ID, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access the Service.

✅ Instead use

• Comentario - Tiny, Privacy-focused, Open-source web comment engine, which adds discussion functionality to plain, boring web pages.
• Disgus - Embeddable comments for your website, backed by Nostr. Like Disqus but Nostr.
• Isso - A lightweight, self hosted, commenting server written in Python and JavaScript. It aims to be a drop-in replacement for Disqus.
• Remark42 - Self-hosted, lightweight, and simple (yet functional) comment engine, which doesn't spy on users.
• Giscus - Commenting system that stores discussions in GitHub Discussions, with no database, ads, or tracking. Open source, MIT licensed.

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• Fawkes 💀 - privacy preserving tool against facial recognition systems.
  • CloakMe 💀 - Web interface for Fawkes algorithm.
• ImageScrubber 💀 - A friendly browser-based tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests (hosted version provided by everestpipkin).

• Stegcloak 💀 - Hide secrets with invisible characters in plain text securely using passwords (repo).

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Drive - Google owned, so privacy policy is very bad. The data is stored in their remote servers where you lose control of it. They use trackers. No encryption available.
• DropBox - Bad privacy policy. The app has various trackers and requires many permissions.
• OneDrive - Microsoft owned, privacy policy is very bad. The data is stored in their remote servers where you lose control of it. They use trackers. No encryption available.

✅ Instead use

• Nextcloud - The open source self-hosted productivity platform that keeps you in control.
• Seafile - High performance file syncing and sharing. It includes a Wiki, WYSIWYG editing and other knowledge management features.
• Peergos - Secure and private space online where you can store, share and view your photos, videos, music and documents. Also includes a calendar, news feed, task lists, chat and email client. Open source and self-hostable.
• Proton Drive - End-to-end encrypted Swiss vault for your files that protects your data. Read this article over Climate activist arrest.
• PrivateStorage - Accountless, privacy-focused cloud storage and folder synchronization with client-side encryption.

Other useful tools

• Cryptomator - Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service
• Syncthing - Continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes.
• Rclone - Rclone is a command line program to manage files on cloud storage. It is a feature rich alternative to cloud vendors' web storage interfaces and like the tools listed above enables encryption for encrypting files in the cloud.
• Restic - Restic is also command line program to manage files on various cloud storage providers. Restic uses encryption by default. Few noteworthy features of restic include browsing through storage as git like snapshots at no extra storage cost, deduplication and significant savings through compression.

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Opt for open-source and P2P alternatives that prioritize data privacy, eliminate third-party interference, and offer transparent, community-backed functionalities over mainstream tools like Riverside.fm, Restream and Camtasia.

• vdo.ninja - Powerful tool that lets you bring remote video feeds into OBS or other studio software via WebRTC.
  • socialstream.ninja - Consolidate your live social messaging streams and much more.
• OBS Studio - Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.
• Screenity - A screen recorder that's free, private, and friendly.

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⛔ Avoid using privative databases which you don't control such as Google Firebase.

✅ Instead use

• Appwrite - Secure open-source backend server for web, mobile & Flutter developers.
• Supabase - Open source Firebase alternative (Limited self-hosting)
• Pocketbase - Open Source backend in 1 file written in Go.
• TrailBase - Open source, single-executable Firebase alternative built on Rust and SQLite, with type-safe REST and realtime APIs, auth, and an admin UI. OSL-3.0 licensed.
• Baserow - Self-hosted no-code database and spreadsheet that works as an open source Airtable alternative. MIT licensed core.

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• Beekeeper Studio - Open Source SQL Editor and Database Manager with a privacy commitment in their mission statement.

⛔ Avoid using privative IDEs that are full of trackers and telemetry.

✅ Instead use

• Neovim - Hyperextensible Vim-based text editor.
• VSCodium - Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode. Vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

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Apps such as Tinder collect and sell your personal intimate information. Tinder in particular has been found to charge users up to five times more for same service, extrapolate estimations on your intelligence and other psychometrics and sell it to third-parties, it may know more about you than yourself, and many more bad things you can find on the internet.

⛔ Avoid

• 
• Grindr
• Badoo
• Lovoo

✅ Instead use

• Alovoa - Free and open-source dating platform that respects your privacy.

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Adobe's dominance in design tools restricts designers' choices and compromises their privacy. Its lack of Linux support, confines designers to Windows or macOS. Plus, Adobe's data collection via Creative Cloud and trackers further amplifies privacy concerns. They also may be using users' work to train their AIs, potentially causing intellectual property problems. For these reasons, designers can consider using open-source, privacy-respecting alternatives, bypassing most of these issues.

✅ Instead use

• Scribus - a free and open-source desktop publishing (DTP) software available for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms.

✅ Instead use

• GIMP - A free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. It is not designed to be used for drawing, though some artists and creators have used it in this way.
• Inkscape - A free and open-source vector graphics editor for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting.
• Krita - A free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation.
• Excalidraw - Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams.

✅ Instead use

• Penpot - Penpot is an Open Source design and prototyping platform for product teams.

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⛔ Avoid using domain registrars who are privacy invasive.

✅ Instead use

• OrangeWebsite - Iceland-based, free-speech web hosting with anonymous signup and cryptocurrency or cash payment.
• 1984 Hosting - Iceland-based hosting and domain registrar focused on civil rights, with Monero and anonymous signup.
• Find more at kycnot.me (VPS Category) - KYC-free VPS and hosting providers.

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• Persepolis Download Manager - Persepolis is a download manager & a GUI for Aria2. It's written in Python. Persepolis is a sample of free and open source software. It's developed for GNU/Linux distributions, BSDs, MacOS, and Microsoft Windows.
• Motrix - A full-featured download manager.
• Xtreme Download Manager - Xtreme Download Manager (XDM) is a powerful tool to increase download speeds up to 500%, save streaming videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, Facebook, Vimeo, Google Video and 1000+ other websites, resume broken/dead downloads, schedule and convert downloads.
• axel - Lightweight CLI download accelerator. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS protocols.

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⛔ Avoid

Commercial ebook platforms track your reading habits, tie purchases to accounts that can be revoked, and require constant online activation.

• Amazon Kindle - Tracks reading activity, requires an Amazon account, and has a documented history of remote deletion.
• Google Play Books - Tied to a Google account, tracks reading data, and does not offer an offline-only mode.
• Kobo / Apple Books - Require accounts and sync reading data to company servers by default.

✅ Instead use

• Calibre - Open-source ebook manager for Linux, Windows, and macOS with format conversion, metadata editing, and a built-in reader (GPL-3.0).
• Kavita - Cross-platform self-hosted digital library for ebooks and comics with a built-in web reader (GPL-3.0).
• Komga - Self-hosted media server for comics, magazines, and ebooks with a responsive web interface and OPDS support (MIT).

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Remember: Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.

• Veracrypt - VeraCrypt is a free open source disk encryption software for Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Shufflecake - Free open source, plausible deniability for multiple hidden filesystems on Linux
• Hat.sh - A Free, Fast, Secure and Serverless File Encryption.
• Cryptomator - Cryptomator encrypts your data quickly and easily. Afterwards you upload them protected to your favorite cloud service.
• Stegcloak 💀 - Hide secrets with invisible characters in plain text securely using passwords.
• Photok - Photok is a free Photo-Safe. It stores your photos encrypted on your device and hides them from others.
• age - Modern command line file encryption tool with small keys and no configuration or keyring to manage. Open source, BSD-3 licensed.
• Tomb - Command line tool to create and manage encrypted storage folders on GNU/Linux, built on standard LUKS and cryptsetup.

• Cryptsetup - Full disk encryption for Linux. Cryptsetup is a utility used to conveniently set up disk encryption based on the DMCrypt kernel module.

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⛔ Avoid

• WeTransfer - Bad privacy policy. Files are not e2e encrypted. Website has many analytics and trackers.
• SendAnywhere - No e2e encryption. Website has loads of analytics and trackers from Facebook, Google, Cloudflare...

✅ Instead use

• Blaze - A fast, p2p and radically different way to transfer files.
• Blindsend 💀 - Open source tool for private, end-to-end encrypted file exchange.
• Croc - Easily and securely send things from one computer to another.
• Dat-cp 💀 - Copy files between hosts on a network using the peer-to-peer Dat network.
• Destiny - Send files directly to the receiver in real-time. Developed for and with HROs as a free Privacy Enhancing Technology alternative.
• Gokapi - Lightweight selfhosted Firefox Send alternative without public upload. AWS S3 supported.
• Lufi - Let's Upload that FIle — File sharing software.
• Localsend - Share files to nearby devices. Free, open source, cross-platform.
• Magic Wormhole - Get things from one computer to another, safely.
• OnionShare - An open source tool that lets you securely and anonymously share files, host websites, and chat with friends using the Tor network.
• Paperless-ngx - A community-supported supercharged version of paperless based on paperless-ng
• PairDrop - An improved version of Snapdrop that also allows you to pair devices and share files outside your network.
• QRcp - Transfer files over wifi from your computer to your mobile device by scanning a QR code without leaving the terminal.
• Send - Simple, private file sharing. (Mozilla Send Fork)
• Sharik 💀 - Sharik works with Wi-Fi connection or Tethering (Wi-Fi Hotspot). No internet connection needed. Available for Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS & Windows.
• Snapdrop - A Progressive Web App for local file sharing inspired by Apple's Airdrop.
• Winden - A convenient version of Magic Wormhole you can use from within your browser. No need to install an app.
• Yopass - Secure sharing of secrets, passwords and files.
• scrt.link - End-to-end encrypted file transfer. Up to 100GB and 30 days retention. Stored in Switzerland.

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⛔ Your health is a very important piece of your private data and you should care a lot about it. Also, health related data is among the most coveted. Please don't use apps from Google, Fitbit, Huawei, Xiaomi or any company that seeks the gathering of your personal data.

If you need an app for menstrual cycle tracking please don't use any apps like Clue, Period Tracker, etc. Those cute pink apps are greedy for your menstrual cycle and intimate life data and will sell it for sure, protect your private life. Check the list below and you will find nice alternatives.

✅ Instead use

• 🤖 Fitotrack - A privacy oriented fitness tracker for Android.
• 🤖 OpenTracks - OpenTracks is a sport tracking application that completely respects your privacy.
• 🤖 Gadgetbridge - A free and cloudless replacement for your gadget vendors' closed source Android applications.
• FitTrackee - Self-hosted web app to record and analyze outdoor activities from GPS files, as a Strava alternative (AGPL-3.0).

• wger - A free, open source, self-hosted web application that manages your exercises, workouts and nutrition.

• OpenFoodFacts - Open Food Facts is a food products database made by everyone, for everyone. You can use it to make better food choices.
  • OFF Apps - Open source Android and iOS apps to scan food barcodes and read ingredient, additive, and nutrition data.

• 🤖 Bluemoon - Open source, privacy friendly menstruation tracking app. Your period, your data!
• 🤖 Drip - Menstrual cycle and fertility tracking. Everything you enter stays on your device.
• Euki - The period tracker that doesn’t track you.
• 🤖 Periodical - A calendar to track your menstruation and calculate possible fertile days
• Poppy - Poppy is a private period tracker that runs in the browser. It stores data locally, and can sync and backup through Nostr relays without a Poppy server or account, all encrypted end to end.

• Fasten 💀 - Fasten is an open-source, self-hosted, personal/family electronic medical record aggregator, designed to integrate with 1000's of insurances/hospitals/clinics.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Fonts (no selfhosted)

✅ Instead use

• coolLabs Fonts - A privacy-friendly drop-in replacement for Google Fonts.
• Bunny Fonts - Bunny Fonts is an open-source, privacy-first web font platform designed to put privacy back into the internet.

• Velvetyne - French type foundry distributing libre, open source typefaces free for personal and commercial use.
• OpenFoundry - Curated platform showcasing open source typefaces that are free to use and modify.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Forms

✅ Instead use

• TypeBot - Open-source conversational forms.
• CryptPad Forms - Part of the Cryptpad end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite.
• FramaForms - Design your online surveys easily while respecting your audience.
• Formbricks - Self-hosted survey and form builder for collecting responses without handing your data to a third party (AGPL-3.0).

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Nintendo collects user data, and if you disable it, they can turn it back on. Also, it has a paid plan that is not accessible to everyone economically.

✅ Instead use

• SuperTuxKart - A 3D open-source arcade racer with a variety characters, tracks, and modes to play.
• Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart - SRB2Kart is a classic styled kart racer, complete with beautiful courses, and wacky items.

The game is owned by Microsoft. If this is not enough, you need a Microsoft account to play Minecraft since March 11th, 2022. Microsoft locks accounts some time not long after account creation and forces the user to provide a phone number. See: Minecraft FAQ, 1, 2

The game has telemetry embeded in it since v21w38a which you can't opt-out. Also, it is tied to the Microsoft privacy terms which are a privacy nightmare.

✅ Instead use

• Luanti - An open source voxel game engine with many features.
  • Mineclonia - Survival sandbox game inspired by Minecraft. Fork of MineClone2 with focus on stability, multiplayer performance and features.

If you still want to play Minecraft, you can add some plugins that can help you preserve a bit your privacy. But still consider that you are supporting Microsoft this way.

✅ Instead use

• No-Chat-Reports - A spigot plugin strips cryptographic signatures from player messages, but it breaks any chat plugin by design.
• FreedomChat - A great alternative to No-Chat-Reports, since it does not break any chat plugin by design.
• No-Telemetry - Mod that disables the usage data collection, aka telemetry, introduced in Minecraft 1.18 (snapshot 21w38a).

Nintendo collects user data, and if you disable it, they can turn it back on. Also, it has a paid plan that is not accessible to everyone economically.

✅ Instead use

• Pokete - A small terminal based game in the style of a very popular and old game by Gamefreak.

• Sonic Robo Blast 2 - Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a 3D open-source Sonic the Hedgehog fangame built using a modified version of the Doom Legacy port of Doom.

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Don't use Google Home or Alexa. Please don't. Don't gift them to anyone. They open the homes doors to surveillance. They can turn these auto-updating devices into surveillance devices at will.

Interesting articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

• Google Home
• Alexa
• Cortana
• Siri

✅ Instead use

• OpenVoiceOS - Open source voice assistant and the maintained successor to Mycroft, running fully offline on your own hardware. Apache-2.0 licensed.
• Home Assistant - Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.

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*Check out this site for comparisons.

⛔ Avoid

• WhatsApp |
• Instagram DM |
• Facebook Messenger |
• Skype |
• Zoom |
• Google Hangouts / Chat |

✅ Instead use

No single point of control or failure. A decentralized network operated by different servers from different volunteers around the globe. You choose where your data stays or you can self-host your own server. Somewhat more complex protocols (because of federation between servers) and some extra metadata is added to the messages (without compromising privacy).

• Matrix (Protocol) - An open network for secure, decentralized communication.
  • Element - All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. End-to-end encryption.
  • Cinny - A Matrix client focusing primarily on simple, elegant and secure interface.
• Jabber / XMPP (Protocol) - The universal and open messaging standard. Tried and tested. Independent. Privacy-focused. E2E encrypted.
  • 🤖 Conversations - Jabber/XMPP client for Android 4.0+ smartphones that has been optimized to provide a unique mobile experience.
  • AstraChat - Another XMPP client.
  • Dino - Modern XMPP desktop client for Linux with OMEMO and OpenPGP end-to-end encryption. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.
  • Gajim - Cross-platform XMPP client with OMEMO encryption, running on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.
  • Snikket - One-command self-hosted XMPP service that bundles a server with matching mobile and desktop clients. Open source and Docker-based.
• DeltaChat - Chat over encrypted e-mail.
• Session - Extreme focus on privacy and anonymity. Blockchain technology.
• SimpleX Chat - The first chat platform that is 100% private by design - it has no access to your connection graph
• Status - Status is a secure messaging app, crypto wallet, and Web3 browser built with state of the art technology.

The service is in charge of running the servers that allow users to communicate. Single point of failure and control, but still 100% safe and trustworthy if the protocols and code are open and audited.

• Threema - The messenger that puts security and privacy first. Pay once, chat forever. No collection of user data. Open Source client.
• Signal - Extreme focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect. Strong encryption by design. 100% Open Source.
  • 🤖 Molly - Signal-compatible fork client with some security enhancements.

No servers involved. Everything goes directly from one peer to the other peer. No point of failure or control. The features are reduced because of the lack of server, messaging can be slower. Best option for critical chats.

• Tox - Tox is easy-to-use software that connects you with friends and family without anyone else listening in.
• Briar - Peer-to-peer encrypted messaging and forums.
• Tinfoil Chat - Onion-routed, endpoint secure messaging system.
• Berty - The privacy-first messaging app that works with or without internet access, cellular data or trust in the network.

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• Keyoxide - A modern, secure and privacy-friendly platform to establish your decentralized online identity.
• LinkStack - Self-hosted open-source Linktree alternative.

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⛔ Avoid

• Bit.ly

✅ Instead use

• MagLit - An encrypted and privacy respecting Link Shortener service that also supports Magnet Links.
• Dub - You can self-host Dub.co for greater control over your data and design.
• Yourls - Self hosted URL shortener in PHP.
• tnyr.me - A zero-trust URL shortener with paswordless end-to-end encryption.
• Kutt - Self-hosted URL shortener with custom domains and password-protected links. Open source, MIT licensed.
• Shlink - Self-hosted URL shortener that keeps its own click analytics on your server. Open source, MIT licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google location history
• Google FindMyDevice

✅ Instead use

• Nextcloud Phonetrack - Nextcloud app to track location history with an Android app (other apps also supported). Supports caching positions offline and sending them to the server in batches. The first-party app has good battery saving options.
• OwnTracks - Location tracking for displaying the current location only (limited location history functionality).
• Traccar - Location tracking software made for dedicated GPS logging devices.
• Dawarich - Self-hosted alternative to Google Location History.

• Find My Device - Find your Android Device via SMS.
• GPSlogger - Lightweight GPS Logging Application For Android. No servers, no internet. Saved to a simple file to local storage.

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⛔ Avoid

• Gmail
• Outlook
• Yandex Mail
• Yahoo! Mail

✅ Instead use

• Forward Email - the 100% open-source and privacy-focused email service.
• ProtonMail - Secure Email. Based in Switzerland. Read this article over Climate activist arrest.
• Tuta - Secure email for everybody. Open Source.
• mailbox.org - Paid email, calendar and office suite based in Germany, with built-in PGP encryption and no ads.
• Riseup - Online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change.
• Mailfence - Secure and private email.

• Docker mail server - A fullstack but simple mail server (SMTP, IMAP, LDAP, Antispam, Antivirus, etc.) using Docker.
• Mailcow: dockerized - The mailserver suite with the 'moo'.
• Mail-in-a-box - Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.
• Mox - Modern full-featured open source secure mail server for low-maintenance self-hosted email.
• Stalwart - All-in-one mail server written in Rust that covers SMTP, IMAP, and JMAP, with two independent security audits (AGPL-3.0).

• 🤖 FairEmail - Fully featured, open source, privacy friendly email app for Android.
• 🤖 K9 - Open Source Email App for Android.

• Thunderbird - A free customizable open source email client.

With email aliases, you can finally create a different identity for each website. Defend against spams, phishing and data breach. You can choose self-hosting any of the following options or you can also use their own platform as a service.

• SimpleLogin - Open source, self-hostable email aliasing service now owned by Proton (AGPL-3.0).
• AnonAddy - Open source, self-hostable email aliasing and forwarding service, now named addy.io (AGPL-3.0).

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Maps
• Apple Maps
• Yandex Maps
• Bing Maps
• Waze
• Sygic
• HERE WeGo
• Petal Maps

✅ Instead use

• Open Street Map (OSM) - OpenStreetMap is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world.
  • OSMAnd - Android/iOS Navigation app using OSM. It is a feature-rich app with all you expect.
• Organic Maps - Great offline maps for hikers and cyclists.
• CoMaps - A community-led free & open source maps app based on OSM

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⛔ Avoid

• Amazon Prime - Bad privacy policy. Apps have Google trackers. Many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• Netflix - Bad privacy policy. Apps have Google trackers. Many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• Disney Plus - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have various trackers. Many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• Plex - Dubitous privacy policy. Apps have many trackers. Way too many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• Spotify - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have many trackers. Way too many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• Deezer - Bad privacy policy. Apps have many trackers. Way too many permissions are required for a streaming app.
• SoundCloud - Dubitous priavcy policy. Apps have many trackers. Way too many permissions are required for a streaming app.

✅ Instead use

• Jellyfin - Jellyfin is the volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached.
• Dim - Dim is a self-hosted media manager. With minimal setup, Dim will organize and beautify your media collections, letting you access and play them anytime from anywhere.
• Stremio - Stremio is a modern media center that's a one-stop solution for your video entertainment.

• Funkwhale - A social platform to enjoy and share music (SoundCloud alternative).
• Subsonic - Your complete, personal music streamer.
• Ampache - A web based audio/video streaming application and file manager.
• Koel - a personal music streaming server that works.
• Nuclear - Modern music player focused on streaming from free sources.
• Navidrome - Lightweight, fast and self-contained personal music streamer.
• 🤖 mucke - A music player for local files with unique custom playback options.

Spotify alternative clients

These clients, although will have less tracking, still DO NOT protect your privacy at all as you will still be streaming from Spotify servers from you own premium (paid, identified) account.

* Premium required.

• Spot* - Native Spotify client built in GTK and Rust.
• psst* - Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI.
• ncspot* - Cross-platform ncurses Spotify client written in Rust, inspired by ncmpc and the likes.

No premium required:

• Spotube - A lightweight free Spotify crossplatform-client.

Youtube Music alternative clients

• Beatbump 💀 - Alternative frontend for YouTube Music; no ads and custom API wrapper.
• SimpMusic - Open source, actively maintained YouTube Music client for Android (successor to the discontinued ViMusic and RiMusic).

Deezer alternative clients

• dzr - Command line Deezer player for Linux, BSD, Android+Termux

⛔ Avoid

• Spotify - Very bad privacy policy. They collect tons of data about you: mood, free time, likes, dislikes, friends... Also, their apps have way too many trackers.
• iVoox - Their apps are filled with trackers. Their website has trackers.
• Audible - Very bad privacy policy. Their app has many trackers.
• Deezer - Bad privacy policy. Apps have many trackers. Way too many permissions are required for a streaming app.

✅ Instead use

• Antennapod - A podcast player that is completely open. Subscribe to any RSS feed.
• Castopod - Self-host your podcasts with ease, keep control over what you create and talk to your audience without any middleman. Your podcast and your audience belong to you and you only.
• Funkwhale - A social platform to enjoy and share audio.

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⛔ Avoid

These providers offer apps and services filled with data trackers. Also, most of them store your notes on their servers and do not offer any kind of encryption.

• Google Keep
  • Keep To Markdown - Convert your Google Keep notes into a standard markdown + YAML header format.
• Evernote
• Squid
• Notion
• OneNote

✅ Instead use

• Anytype - An open-source Notion alternative. E2EE, cloud and local network sync, can be self-hosted.
• AppFlowy - Open Source Notion Alternative. You are in charge of your data and customizations.
• HedgeDoc - Formerly CodiMD (community). An awesome platform to write and share markdown.
• Joplin - Note taking and to-do application with synchronisation and encryption capabilities.
• Logseq - A privacy-first alternative to WorkFlowy.
• Memos - An open-source, self-hosted memo hub with knowledge management and socialization.
• Nextcloud Notes - The Notes app is a distraction free notes taking app for Nextcloud.
  • Nextcloud Notes app - An android client for Nextcloud Notes.
• Notally - A beautiful notes app (local only, no sync).
• Notesnook - Open source zero knowledge private note taking.
• Obsidian - Obsidian is the private and flexible note‑taking app. Closed source but has no trackers (website / apps) and E2EE sync.
• Quillpad - Take beautiful markdown notes and stay organized with task lists. Fork of Quillnote.
• SiYuan - A local-first personal knowledge management system.
• Standard Notes - A free, open-source, and completely encrypted notes app.
• TinyList - Create and share notes and checklists, without sacrificing your privacy.
• Trilium Notes - Build your personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes
• Vikunja - The open-source to-do app to organize your life.
• YankNote - A Hackable Markdown Note Application for Programmers.
• 🤖 Tasks.org - Open source to-do and task manager for Android with CalDAV sync and offline use. GPL-3.0 licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• Shazam - It's under Apple's privacy policy. The android app has a few Google trackers.
• SoundHound - Has way too many trackers for a music recognition app.
• Musicxmatch - The app has trackers and requires a dangerous amount of permissions.

✅ Instead use

Shazam alternative clients

• SongRec - An open-source Shazam client for Linux, written in Rust.
• SongID Telegram Bot - A Telegram bot that can identify music in audio/video files you send it.

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⛔ Avoid

• Microsoft Office
• Google Docs

✅ Instead use

• LibreOffice - Free and open source offline office.
• OnlyOffice - Free and open source online office for collaboration.
• Cryptpad - Collaboration suite, encrypted and open-source.
• Etherpad - Highly customizable open source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time.
• Fileverse - Fileverse is building healthier alternatives with self-sovereignty, privacy by design, and standards compliance at its core.
  • Ddocs: privacy-enhancing alternative to google docs: onchain, end-to-end encrypted, and decentralized.
  • dSheets: decentralized alternative to Excel and Google Sheets.
• Grist - Self-hostable spreadsheet and database hybrid for organizing data, as an open source Airtable alternative. Apache-2.0 licensed.

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Many websites require phone number verification. These services offer a way to receive (and sometimes send) SMS messages in a privacy-focused manner.

• Crypton - Secure SMS Sim Card in the cloud. (Based in Iceland)
• Virtualsim - Virtualsim provides physical SIM cards leasing for SMS verifications. (Based in Ukraine)
• MoneroSMS - Virtual numbers for SMS/MMS messaging and verifications. CLI and web app. (Based in United States)

• Onlinesim - Receive SMS online to virtual phone number. (Based in Russia)

• SmsPVA - SmsPVA is a service providing a phone number you can send any SMS on and get a text of it. (Based in France)

⛔ Try to avoid using Google Android or any Android that has been modified and tuned by any manufacturer such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, etc. Android is an Open Source project - AOSP - Android Open Source Project - and it has many versions that will respect the user privacy and data and won't share it with private servers from manufacturers or service providers.

✅ Instead use

GrapheneOS has a strong focus on security and privacy. It deploys technologies to mitigate many vulnerabilities and makes exploiting of vulnerabilities substantially more difficult. It improves the security of both the OS and the apps running on it.

• GrapheneOS - GrapheneOS is an open source privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility. Only Google Pixel phones are supported.

These ROMs also offer good priavcy and/or extended support for a wider range of devices. Note that these may also reduce security, increasing the attack surface of the operating system.

• CalyxOS - Privacy by Design ROM. Offers better security than LineageOS or Replicant.
• LineageOS - A free and open-source operating system for various devices, based on the Android mobile platform.
• /e/OS - Degoogled Android ROM by Murena that bundles microG and optional cloud services. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.
• iodéOS - Degoogled Android ROM with a built-in network firewall that blocks ads and trackers. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.

• UBPorts - Ubuntu Touch is the touch-friendly mobile version of Ubuntu.
• Nura (formerly postmarketOS) - Touch optimised and pre-configured version of Alpine Linux.
• PureOS - Operating system developed by purism for the Librem 5.
• Plasma Mobile - Plasma, in your pocket. Privacy-respecting, open source and secure phone ecosystem.
• mobian - Debian for mobile.

⛔ Don't use Google's Android TV, LG WebOS or any other privacy-invasive common TV OS that comes preinstalled with your TV.

✅ Instead use

Currently I am not aware of any privacy-respecting smartTV software. If you are aware of any, please open a Pull Request or an issue.

The following software is not an Operating System but comprises apps that can be used on almost any OS. These apps respect your privacy and offer features similar to those of a Smart TV. A recommended setup involves connecting a Raspberry Pi 4 running a GNU/Linux operating system to your TV, installing tools like KDE Connect to control media from your phone, and then adding the apps listed below:

• Kodi - It is an entertainment hub that brings all your digital media together into a beautiful and user friendly package. It is 100% free and open source, very customisable and runs on a wide variety of devices.
• OSMC - OSMC is a free and open source media center built for the people, by the people.

You can also check out Media Streaming Platforms section.

⛔ Avoid

• MS Windows - Owned by Microsoft it is known for collecting many user data and tricking users to own a Microsoft account. If you still want and happen to use Windows 10 or 11, you can use Win11Debloat, or this other tool to see and disable the tons of privacy-invasive settings of MS Windows.
• MacOS.

✅ Instead use

GNU/Linux is a family of free (as in freedom and as in free beer) and open source Operating Systems mostly developed by the community. If you don't know where to start these are good options for begginers:

• Fedora - Community Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat, shipping recent open source software on a six-month cycle.
• Mint (Cinnamon) is a beginner friendly distribution.
• Qubes OS is a security-oriented operating system that isolates various workspaces into separate virtual machines to enhance privacy and security.
• Tails is a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship. It always starts from the same clean state and everything you do disappears automatically when you shut down Tails.
• Whonix is an operating system that runs inside virtual machines and forces every connection through Tor.
• Kicksecure is a hardened Debian-based distribution from the Whonix developers, secure by default.
• secureblue is a hardened image built on Fedora Atomic Desktops, with security-focused defaults and a hardened browser.

• AtlasOS - An open-source modification of Windows 10, designed to optimize performance, and latency. Atlas removes all types of tracking embedded within Windows and implements numerous group policies to minimize data collection.
• ReactOS - ReactOS is an operating system able to run Windows software, Windows drivers that looks-like Windows and is free and open source.
• RedoxOS - A WIP project aiming to provide a Unix-like Operating System written in Rust.

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⛔ Avoid

• LastPass
• Dashlane

✅ Instead use

• AliasVault - An open source E2EE password & alias manager with a built-in email alias server
• Bitwarden - An open source cloud based password manager.
  • vaultwarden - Unofficial Bitwarden compatible self-hosted server, formerly known as bitwarden_rs.
• CarryPass - Zero-knowledge PWA password manager with deterministic generation, encrypted vaults, and team collaboration. (Source) MIT
• KeepassXC - Securely store passwords using industry standard encryption, no sync just storage.
  • KeepassDX for Android.
  • Strongbox for iOS.
  • KeeWeb for Web and other platforms.
• LessPass - Stateless password manager. Remember one master password to access your passwords. No sync needed.
• Padloc - The last password manager you'll ever want to use.
• Passbolt - An open source password manager designed for team collaboration.
• Passky - Simple, modern, lightweight, open-source and secure password manager.
• Proton Pass - Open-source and encrypted password manager by Proton.

These tools are useful when sharing secrets, code snippets or any other kind of text with others in a private way.

• crypt.fyi - Ephemeral zero-knowledge sensitive data sharing platform with web, cli, and chrome-extension clients
• NoPaste - Open Source pastebin alternative that works with no database, and no back-end code. Instead, the data is compressed and stored entirely in the link that you share, nowhere else.
• PrivateBin - A minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data. Data is encrypted/decrypted in the browser using 256 bits AES.
• Yopass - Secure sharing of secrets, passwords and files.
• scrt.link - Share a secret. End-to-end encrypted. Ephemeral. Open-source.
• dele-to - Open Source. Modern app to share sensitive credentials and secrets securely with client-side AES-256 encryption, zero-knowledge architecture, and automatic self-destruction.

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⛔ Avoid

• Visa / Mastercard
• PayPal
• WeChat
• _insertBigTechHere_Pay
• Bank payments (wire, SEPA, etc)

✅ Instead use

• Monero - Monero is cash for a connected world. It's fast, private, untraceable and secure.
• Cash - Use person-to-person payments using physical notes and coins.

• Sparrow Wallet - An open source, cross-platform desktop wallet that gives you many privacy-preserving spending tools.
• Wasabi Wallet - An open source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet available on Desktop.
• Cake Wallet - Open source, non-custodial wallet for Monero, Bitcoin, and other coins on mobile and desktop. MIT licensed.
• Feather Wallet - Lightweight open source Monero desktop wallet with built-in Tor and coin control. BSD-3 licensed.

• BTCPay Server - Self-hosted, non-custodial cryptocurrency payment processor for merchants, as an alternative to PayPal or BitPay. MIT licensed.

• kycnot.me - Directory of KYC-free exchanges, payment processors, and other privacy services.

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• Actual - Super fast and privacy-focused app for managing your finances.
• Firefly III - A free and open source personal finance manager.
• GnuCash - GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
• Sure - Open Source and secure OS for your personal finances. Community maintained fork of the archived Maybe project.
• ezBookkeeping - A lightweight, self-hosted personal finance app with a user-friendly interface and powerful bookkeeping features.

• ProExpense - A simple free finance note to safely record daily expenses.
• My Expenses - Featureful GPL licenced Android Expense Tracking App.
• Wallos - Self-hosted tracker for subscriptions and recurring expenses, with reminders and spending statistics. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.

⛔ Avoid

• Tricount - App size is massive (~200MB) and contains many trackers from Facebook, Google and Huawei.
• Splitwise - App contains trackers from Google and Amazon.

✅ Instead use

• Spliit - Share Expenses with Friends & Family. No ads. No account. Open Source. Forever Free.
• SplitPro - Website - Split Expenses with your friends for free. An open source alternative to SplitWise.
• IHateMoney - Manage your shared expenses, easily. Lacks unequal splitting.
  • MoneyBuster - Android client for Nextcloud Cospend and IHateMoney servers.
• Nextcloud Cospend - A group/shared budget manager inspired by the great IHateMoney.
  • MoneyBuster - Android client for Nextcloud Cospend and IHateMoney servers.

• Debitum 💀 - With Debitum you can track all kinds of IOUs, be it money or lent items.

• Ghostfolio - open source wealth management software built with web technology.
• PortfolioPerformance - An open source tool to calculate the overall performance of an investment portfolio-
• Rotki - An awesome portfolio tracking, analytics, accounting and tax reporting application that protects your privacy.

⛔ Avoid

• 
• VSCO

✅ Instead use

• miniPaint - Open Source alternative to Photopea. miniPaint operates directly in the browser. Nothing will be sent to any server. Everything stays in your browser.

• GIMP - The Free & Open Source Image Editor.
• Krita - Krita is a free and open source digital painting application
• Czkawka - Multi functional app to find duplicates and similar images etc.
• DigiKam - Awesome Professional Photo Management with the Power of Open Source.
• Inkscape - Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images.
• ImageGlass - ImageGlass is a lightweight software application whose purpose is to help you view images in a clean and intuitive working environment.
• darktable - darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer
• RapidRAW - A beautiful, non-destructive and GPU-accelerated RAW image editor built with performance in mind. Lightweight (<20MB) cross-platform alternative to Adobe Lightroom. AGPL-3.0 licensed.
• RawTherapee - Offline open source RAW photo developer that pairs well with darktable as a Lightroom alternative. GPL-3.0 licensed.

• Pocket Paint - The standard image manipulation app for Catroid.
• Scrambled Exif - Remove Exif data from pictures before sharing them.
• ImagePipe - Reduces image size and removes exif-tags when sharing images on android devices.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Photos
  • Google Photos Takeout Helper 💀 - Script that organizes the Google Takeout messy archive into one big chronological folder. Use this script to get out of Google Photos :).
• Amazon Photos

✅ Instead use

• Immich - Self-hosted photo and video backup solution directly from your mobile phone.
• LibrePhotos - Active OwnPhotos fork. Self hosted alternative to Google Photos.
• Nextcloud - The open source self-hosted productivity platform that keeps you in control. It has a Photos plugin to help you organize and visualize your photos.
• Photoprism - Feature rich server-based application for browsing, organizing and sharing your personal photo collection. The most similar to Google Photos.
• Pigallery2 - A self-hosted directory-first photo gallery website.
• Photoview - Photo gallery for self-hosted personal servers with Facial Recognition.
• Photostructure - Self-hosted photo library that makes browsing and sharing a lifetime of memories delightful.
• Stingle Photos - Open source solution that provides strong security, privacy and encryption to backup your photos.
• Ente - End-to-end encrypted storage for photos and videos. Open source, audited independently.

• Crypt.ee - A private and encrypted place for all your photos, documents, notes and more.
• Ente - End-to-end encrypted storage for photos and videos. Open source, audited independently.
• Stingle Photos - Open source solution that provides strong security, privacy and encryption to backup your photos.

• DigiKam - Awesome Professional Photo Management with the Power of Open Source.
• Photok - Photok is a free Photo-Safe. It stores your photos encrypted on your device and hides them from others.
• ImageGlass - ImageGlass is a lightweight software application whose purpose is to help you view images in a clean and intuitive working environment.

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This section is dedicated to some tools that may help users analyze the privacy status on their devices.

• Whoami Project 💀 - Whoami provides enhanced privacy, anonymity for Debian and Arch based linux distributions.
• BusKill - BusKill is a Dead Man Switch triggered when a magnetic breakaway is tripped, severing a USB connection.
• OpenSnitch - Interactive application firewall for GNU/Linux that helps users detect, monitor, and block unwanted outbound connections.
• MAT2 - Removes metadata from images, documents, audio and other files. Command line tool with file manager integrations.
• Metadata Cleaner - Simple desktop app to view and remove file metadata, built on MAT2.
• Mobile Verification Toolkit - Forensic tool from Amnesty International that checks Android and iOS devices for traces of spyware such as Pegasus.

• εxodus - The privacy audit platform for Android applications. Find how many trackers your apps have.
  • ClassyShark3xodus - Checks apk(s) for known trackers (provided by Exodus) +other warnings and specs.
• Plexus - Remove the fear of Android app compatibility on de-Googled devices. Find if an app will work on a De-Googled device.
• Netguard - A simple way to block access to the internet per application.
• RethinkDNS + Firewall - An open-source, no-root firewall and DNS changer, with anti-censorship capabilities for Android 6+.
• 🤖 Orbot - Routes app traffic through the Tor network, system-wide as a VPN or per app. Made by the Guardian Project.

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⛔ Avoid

• TeamViewer
• AnyDesk

✅ Instead use

• RustDesk - Open-source remote desktop client software, written in Rust. Works out of the box, full control of your data, with no concerns about security.
• screego - Screen sharing for developers.
• Remmina - Remote access screen and file sharing to your desktop (RDP).
• UltraVNC - UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free - remote pc access softwares - that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen.
• MeshCentral - The open source, multi-platform, self-hosted, feature packed web site for remote device management.
• Apache Guacamole - Clientless self-hosted remote desktop gateway that gives RDP, VNC, and SSH access from a browser. Apache-2.0 licensed.
• Sunshine + Moonlight - Self-hosted desktop and game streaming host (Sunshine) with matching clients (Moonlight). Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• Stock ISP routers and vendor firmware: closed source, slow or missing security updates, and often phone home to the vendor or ISP.

✅ Instead use

• OpenWrt - Open source Linux firmware that replaces the stock software on hundreds of consumer routers, with years of security updates.
• OPNsense - Open source firewall and routing platform based on FreeBSD, for dedicated hardware or a spare PC.
• IPFire - Hardened open source Linux firewall distribution with intrusion prevention and a web interface.

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⛔ Avoid

• Feedly
• Inoreader
• Google News

These services build a profile from everything you read. A local or self-hosted reader fetches feeds directly, so nobody sees your reading list.

✅ Instead use

• FreshRSS - Self-hosted feed aggregator with a web interface, multi-user support and an API for mobile apps.
• Miniflux - Minimalist self-hosted feed reader with no tracking, written in Go.
• NetNewsWire - Open source RSS reader for macOS and iOS that works locally or syncs with self-hosted services.
• Fluent Reader - Open source desktop RSS reader for Windows, macOS and Linux.
• NewsFlash - Open source RSS reader for Linux that works locally or with self-hosted services such as Miniflux and FreshRSS.
• Newsboat - RSS reader for the terminal.
• 🤖 Feeder - Open source RSS reader for Android that fetches feeds directly on your device, with no account.
• 🤖 Read You - Open source Material You RSS reader for Android, local or synced with self-hosted services.
• 🤖 Capy Reader - Open source RSS reader for Android, local or synced with Miniflux and FreshRSS.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google
• Yahoo!
• Bing
• Yandex
• Ecosia

✅ Instead use

• librengine 💀 - Privacy Web Search Engine
• SearxNG - Free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases.
• DuckDuckGo - A privacy respecting search engine.
• Brave Search - A privacy respecting search engine with its own independent index.
• Qwant - A zero tracking search engine made and hosted in France, EU.
• Marginalia - Independent search engine with its own crawler and index that favors text-heavy, non-commercial pages. Self-hostable, AGPL-3.0 licensed.
• YaCy - Peer-to-peer decentralized search engine where every user runs a node and shares the index. Open source, GPL-2.0 licensed.

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⛔ Avoid:

• Medium - website has Google trackers and ads.
• Blogger - Google owned, has google trackers and ads.

✅ Alternatives:

• Plume 🧩 - Federated blogging application, thanks to ActivityPub.
• WriteFreely 🧩 - An open source platform for building a writing space on the web.

✅ Alternative Medium frontends:

• Scribe - Medium alternative forntend inspired by Invidious.

⛔ Don't use Instagram (or at least the official client). Instagram is a very privacy-invasive app with biased results and feeds based on user profiles, it is also used as a manipulation tool and has a lot of censorship going against free speech. Lastly, it has an addictive and toxic UI design.

✅ Instead use

Alternatives to Instagram

• Pixelfed 🧩 - Decentralized, federated and Open Source alternative to Instagram with posts, videos, stories, tags, etc.

⛔ Quora's website has ads and trackers that are used to get your data which is then sold/shared to third parties. Their privacy policy is bad.

✅ Quora alternative frontends (web-based):

• Quetre - Quetre is an alternative front-end to Quora. It enables you to see answers without ads, trackers, and other such bloat.

⛔ Don't use YouTube (or at least the official client). YouTube is very privacy invasive, it generates a very accurate profile based on your interests. Also it is a radicalization tool which shows biased content to users in order to get more engagement and to get them to watch more and more content creating an addiction. It never shows you alternative opinions to your ideology/bias. YouTube censors a lot. YouTube collects a LOT of your data: interests, free time, ideology, likes, dislikes, music taste, etc.

✅ Instead use

• Peertube 🧩 - A free, open and decentralized alternative to video platforms.
• Odysee - Odysee is a video platform backed by the creators of lbry and uses the lbry blockchain protocol.
• DTube - A full-featured video sharing website, decentralized.

✅ YouTube alternative frontends (web-based):

• Invidious - Alternative and privacy respecting YouTube frontend.
• Piped - An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design.
• ViewTube - ViewTube is an alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend written in Vue.js
• Youtube-Local - browser-based client for watching Youtube anonymously and with greater page performance.

✅ YouTube alternative clients (apps):

• 🤖 NewPipe - Alternative Android YouTube app. No account needed, privacy respecting, no ads.
• 🤖 SkyTube - Alternative Android YouTube app. No account needed, privacy respecting, no ads.
• FreeTube - FreeTube is an open source desktop YouTube player built with privacy in mind. (Uses Local RSS API or Invidious for backend).
• 🤖 LibreTube - An alternative frontend for YouTube, for Android using Piped.
• Yattee - Alternative YouTube frontend for iOS, tvOS and macOS built with Invidious and Piped.
• 🤖 Clipious 💀 Invidious client for android

⛔ Avoid using TikTok, it is a toxic-designed application that harms not only the user privacy but also user integrity. You can take a read on these several posts.

✅ TikTok alternative frontends (web-based):

• ProxiTok - Open source alternative frontend for TikTok

⛔ Avoid using Twitter official app / website. It tracks users and creates user profiles based on what they follow, retweet and like. Twitter harms and violates user privacy with their policies by default.

• Memos - An open-source, self-hosted memo hub with knowledge management and socialization.

• Nostr - Open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global "social" network. It doesn't rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works. Note: Nostr is a protocol, so it is capable of offering much more than a Twitter alternative.

• Mastodon 🧩 - Free, federated microblogging social network built on open protocols.
  • Mastodon Apps - List of Mastodon apps for Android, iOS, Web and Desktop.
• Pleroma 🧩 - Pleroma is a free, federated social networking server built on open protocols.
  • Soapbox - A frontend for Pleroma with a focus on custom branding and ease of use.

• Nitter 💀 - Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy.
• Squawker - Open source Twitter client for Android, the maintained fork of Fritter.
• Feetter 💀 - Create, sync and manage Nitter feeds without registration from any device.

⛔ Try to avoid using Reddit or at least avoid their official clients as they are plenty of trackers, ads and share unnecessary user data with their servers.

✅ Reddit alternatives:

• Aether - Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities.
• Mbin 🧩 - A reddit-like content aggregator and micro-blogging platform for the fediverse; the community-maintained continuation of kbin.
• Lemmy 🧩 - A federated and open alternative to Reddit in Rust.

✅ Privacy respecting Reddit clients:

• Redlib - An alternative private front-end to Reddit, with its origins in Libreddit.

⛔ Avoid using platforms as Twitch, Patreon, YouTube as they are very privacy-invasive with your viewers (and you!). Instead, you can try using some self-hosted platforms that do take care of everyone's privacy.

✅ Alternatives:

• Owncast - Take control over your live stream video by running it yourself. Streaming + chat out of the box.

✅ Privacy respecting Twitch clients:

• 🤖 Twire - Open source, ad-free Twitch browser and stream player for Android.

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⛔ Imgur website is plenty of bloat, gifs, cookies, javascript and trackers.

✅ Alternatives:

• rimgo - An alternative frontend for Imgur. Read-only, no-js, Based on rimgu and rewritten in Go.

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⛔ IMDb is owned by Amazon and its website is loaded with ads and third-party trackers.

✅ IMDb alternative frontends:

• libremdb - Alternative privacy-respecting frontend for IMDb that removes ads and trackers. Open source and self-hostable (AGPL-3.0).

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⛔ Fandom wikis (formerly Wikia) are overloaded with ads, autoplaying video, and trackers.

✅ Fandom alternative frontends:

• BreezeWiki - Alternative frontend for Fandom wikis that strips ads, video, and clutter. Open source and self-hostable.

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⛔ Avoid

• 
• Google Meet
• Microsoft Teams
• 

✅ Instead use

• Zulip - Chat for distributed teams.
• Stoat (formerly Revolt) - User-first chat platform built with modern web technologies.
• Twake - Work in a team faster. Twake covers all of your organizational needs through a single platform.
• RocketChat - Control your communication, manage your data, and have your own collaboration platform to improve team productivity.
• Nextcloud Talk - Keep conversations private with Nextcloud Talk.
• Mattermost - Open-source Slack alternative.

• See this section for Discord mods and alternative clients

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• Screenity - A powerful privacy-friendly screen recorder and annotation tool to make better videos for work, education, and more.
• OBS - Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Translate
• DeepL
• Bing Translator

✅ Text translation

• Mozilla Translate - Open Source, runs model locally in your browser.
• Libretranslate - Open Source Machine Translation - 100% Self-Hosted. No Limits. No Ties to Proprietary Services.
• Apertium - A free/open-source machine translation platform, runs offline on your computer
• Softcatala - Open Source Translation tool - Only Catalan/Spanish/English/French (uses apertium)
• TranslateLocally – Free/open-source neural MT, runs offline on your computer
• Linguist - A free and Open Source full-featured translation solution in-browser with embedded offline translator and custom translators. Full-page translation, TTS, dictionary, translation for user input and selected text on page.

✅ Alternative Google Translate frontends

• Lingva 💀 - Alternative front-end for Google Translate. Demo.
• Simplytranslate - Alternative front-end for Google Translate and LibreTranslate. Demo
• Mozhi - Alternative frontend that aggregates Google Translate, DeepL, Yandex, and other engines behind one private UI. Self-hostable, AGPL-3.0 licensed.

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• Skymap - Open online planetarium program.
• CrowdSec - An open-source, modernized and collaborative fail2ban.
• Hetty - Hetty is an HTTP toolkit for security research. It aims to be an open-source alternative to Burp Suite Pro.
• Visited - Locally collect browsing history over browsers.

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• Deskreen - Turn any device into a secondary screen for your computer.

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⛔ Avoid

• Github - , although the privacy policy is not very bad, it is owned by Microsoft, and it's common knowledge that it uses the code it hosts to train AI models.

✅ Instead use

• Codeberg - Codeberg is a collaboration platform providing Git hosting and services for free and open source software, content and projects.
• Forgejo - Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge.
• GitLab - GitLab a DevOps software package that can develop, secure, and operate software.
• Radicle - An open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow.
• Gitea - Lightweight self-hosted Git forge and the project Forgejo was forked from. Open source, MIT licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• Zoom - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have Google trackers. Many permissions required.
• Skype - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have Google and Microsoft trackers. Way too many permissions required.
• Google Meet - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have Google trackers embeded (as it is a Google app). Way too many permissions required.
• Whatsapp - Bad privacy policy. Apps have Google trackers and most probably Facebook trackers embeded (as it is a Facebook app). Way too many permissions required.
• Instagram - Very bad privacy policy. Apps have Facebook trackers. Way too many permissions required.
• Discord - Very bad privacy policy.. Apps have various trackers. Many permissions required.
• Clubhouse

✅ Instead use

• BigBlueButton - BigBlueButton is a web conferencing system designed for online learning.
• Briefing - Secure direct video group chat. Only open technologies (such as WebRTC) are used, which work with all modern browsers.
• Chitchatter - Secure P2P chat that is serverless, decentralized, and ephemeral. Supports text, audio, video, screen, and file sharing.
• Jam 💀 - Jam is your own open source Clubhouse for mini conferences, friends, communities.
• Jami - P2P audio and video conferences.
• Jitsi Meet - More secure, more flexible, and completely free video conferencing. If you use the official instance, you will need to login. Self-hosting is recommended.
• Mirotalk P2P - Free WebRTC - P2P - Simple, Secure, Fast Real-Time Video Conferences Up to 4k and 60fps, compatible with all browsers and platforms.
• Mumble - Mumble is an open source voice communication application with advanced features.
• PeerCalls - Group peer to peer video calls for everyone written in Go and TypeScript.
• Nextcloud Talk - Self-hosted video calls and chat that run inside your own Nextcloud server over WebRTC (AGPL-3.0).

• OpenAsar - An open-source alternative of Discord desktop's app.asar that comes with a No Tracking option that disables Discord's crash and error reporting.
• Vencord - A Discord client mod that does things differently.
• BetterDiscord - A client modification for Discord, also you need to install a DoNotTrack plugin to block trackers.
• Kernel 💀 - A super small and fast Electron client mod with the most capability, also you need to install a Discord Utilities package to block trackers.
• Replugged - A continuation of the deprecated client mod Powercord.
• WebCord - A Discord and Fosscord API-less client made with the Electron.
• 🤖 Aliucord - A modification for the Android Discord app that fully disables the Discord Tracking.
• Vesktop - Standalone desktop client for Discord that blocks its telemetry and ships with Vencord built in. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.

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⛔ Avoid

• 
• Sony Vegas
• DaVinci Resolve

Such programs come filled with trackers and telemetry. You can get a full list of reasons of why you should not use Adobe here. Almost the same apply for many privative editors.

✅ Instead use

• kdenlive - Open source video editor. Free and easy to use for any purpose, forever.
• LosslessCut - LosslessCut aims to be the ultimate cross platform FFmpeg GUI for extremely fast and lossless operations on video, audio, subtitle and other related media files.
• Olive Video Editor - Free open-source advanced non-linear video editor currently in Alpha state.
• OpenCut - [beta] A free, open-source video editor for web, desktop, and mobile.
• Shotcut - Shotcut is a free, open source and simple cross-platform video editor.

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⛔ Avoid

• Free VPNs from Google Play or any appstore. These services are not free as they will suck your connections' data, keep logs and profile you to sell your data to advertisers. If a government wants to track someone, such apps will be the first ones to fall.

• Closed source VPN apps such as Surfshark or NordVPN may be less trustworthy as nobody can be sure how they handle your data. Also, paying with Credit Card will get you identified on the payment. Furthermore, if you need to give your email it will also identify you if this same email has been used in other services.

✅ Instead use

Here are some open source and truly private (no personal data and/or credit card needed) options:

• IVPN - No-logs VPN with open source apps, no-email signup, and cash, Monero, or Bitcoin payment.
• nadanada (formerly LNVPN) - Pay-per-use WireGuard VPN with no account, paid by Lightning Network or other cryptocurrency.
• Mullvad VPN - No-logs VPN with open source apps, anonymous numbered accounts, and cash or cryptocurrency payment.
• Proton VPN - Swiss no-logs VPN with open source, audited apps on every platform and a no-data-cap free tier.
• SPN - Open source, system-wide network that routes each app connection through its own path across multiple nodes, giving per-connection IP separation instead of a single shared exit. Built into the Safing Portmaster firewall for Windows and Linux.
• Amnezia VPN - Self-hosted, censorship-resistant VPN that you deploy on your own server, with audited open source apps (GPL-3.0).
• Find more at kycnot.me (VPN Category) - KYC-free VPN providers.

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⛔ Avoid

• Google Chrome - Owned by google and built upon the open-source Chromium project (also Google-owned). It comes with many privacy-invasive features, it is connected to your Google account most times. It is under Google's privacy policy which is known to be very bad. Google is willing to enforce the Manifest v3 which is outright harmful to privacy efforts.
• Microsoft Edge - It's a Microsoft-themed version of Chromium with Microsoft trackers instead of Google ones. Under Microsoft's privacy policy, which is also very bad. If you still want to use it, you can follow this guide to harden it a bit.
• Opera - Opera was acquired by a consortium of Chinese investors. The app has many trackers.

✅ Instead use

• Brave - Android/iOS. Brave offers a pretty good out-of-the-box set of privacy and tracker protections.
• Firefox - Android/iOS
  • 🤖 IronFox - Mull browser fork. A hardened fork of Firefox for Android, with proprietary blobs removed.
• 🤖 Vanadium - Privacy and security enhanced releases of Chromium by GrapheneOS.
• 🤖 Privacy Browser
• Tor Browser - iOS/Android. Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance and circumvent censorship.
• Cromite - Cromite is a Chromium fork based on Bromite with built-in support for ad blocking and an eye for privacy.

• Ungoogled Chromium - A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency. Ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services.
• Brave - Brave offers a pretty good out-of-the-box set of privacy and tracker protections.
• Firefox - Open Source, independent browser. It needs some hardening and tweaking to achieve great privacy.
  • LibreWolf - Privacy-focused Firefox fork.
• Tor Browser - Hardened Firefox that routes traffic through the Tor network to resist tracking, surveillance, and censorship.
• Mullvad Browser - Browser with the privacy and security implications of the Tor Browser, without the use of the Tor network.
• Zen Browser - Firefox-based browser with enhanced tracking protection on by default and a focus on calm, uncluttered browsing. MPL-2.0 licensed.
• Floorp - Firefox fork with telemetry disabled and extra customization, built with privacy in mind. Open source, MPL-2.0 licensed.

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Please read about what the addon does before installing. If you don't understand what you are doing you could end up damaging your privacy. Also, too many addons can slow down your browsing experience.

• uBlock Origin - Free, open-source ad content blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.
  • Read the extension docs and pick one of the recommended modes to increase your privacy.
  • Go to settings > filters list > annoyances, turn on easylist-cookies. This will avoid you the annoying Cookie popups.
• LibRedirect - A simple web extension that redirects Twitter, YouTube, Google Maps and many more requests to privacy friendly alternatives. Former Privacy Redirect is no longer maintained, LibRedirect is a maintained fork.
• Privacy Badger - Browser extension from the EFF that learns to block trackers as you browse. Open source, GPL-3.0 licensed.
• ClearURLs - Browser extension that automatically strips tracking parameters from links and URLs. Open source, LGPL-3.0 licensed.

• Single File - Save a faithful copy of an entire web page in a single HTML file so you can use it offline.

• xBrowserSync - Browser syncing as it should be: secure, anonymous and free!

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✅ Instead use

• GlobaLeaks - Self-hostable whistleblowing platform for organisations, newsrooms and activists, replacing hosted reporting portals. Open source (AGPL-3.0).
• SecureDrop - Self-hosted submission system that lets newsrooms receive documents from anonymous sources over Tor, replacing email and cloud uploads. Open source (AGPL-3.0).

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Anonymity, Privacy, and Security are often used interchangeably, but they actually represent distinct concepts. It is important to understand the differences between them.

• Privacy is about regulating who has access to your personal information, being aware of the data that is being collected about you, and having the ability to decide who can access it and how. In short, privacy involves controlling your personal information.

• Security refers to safeguarding your personal information from unauthorized access or theft. It involves ensuring that your data is protected and stored in a secure manner, making it difficult for malicious actors to access it.

• Anonymity is about ensuring that your actions cannot be traced back to you. This means that even if someone discovers what you are doing, they will not be able to identify you as the source.

It is important to note that privacy and security are not necessarily interdependent. For instance, Google systems are secure and unlikely to be hacked, but Google still has access to your personal data and makes use of it.

Privacy and anonymity are also not necessarily linked, services like Signal offer high levels of privacy since they do not collect any data about what you say, who you talk to or how you use the app, but they may not be anonymous since you still need to register using your phone number (which is in many cases linked to your identity).

Finally, there are services that may offer all three: anonymity, privacy, and security. The primary focus of this list is to provide alternatives that prioritize privacy. These alternatives give you control over your data and do not collect or sell it.

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