Privacy Tools: VPNs, Browsers, Email, and More#

A practical guide to privacy tools I’ve personally used, covering VPNs, browsers, email, email aliases, and messengers.

NOTE
This is not an endorsement or sponsored content. These are tools I’ve personally used and tested.

VPNs#

Tool	Price	Notes
ProtonVPN	Free	Based in Switzerland. Free with no data cap and a no-logs policy. Has servers in the US, Canada, Netherlands, Japan, and more. The free plan blocks torrenting, which requires a paid plan.
Mullvad	€5/month	Based in Sweden. Offers fast speeds and servers in many countries, making it a good choice for torrenting. No long-term commitment, and it accepts Bitcoin.
IVPN	$2/week	Based in Gibraltar (a British Overseas Territory). Its weekly plan is useful if you only need a VPN for a few days, which ProtonVPN and Mullvad don’t offer.

When choosing a VPN, look for a no-logs policy and a provider with a good track record.

Timezone Spoofing#

VPNs hide your IP address from websites and your traffic from your ISP (like Comcast). However, websites can still read your device’s clock to estimate your location, like this:

const tzName = Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone;
console.log(tzName); // returns IANA timezone, such as America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo, Europe/Berlin

To get around this, set your device’s timezone to a nearby city that shares the same time. If you’re in Los Angeles, use Vancouver. If you’re in Tokyo, use Seoul. This keeps your clock accurate while making your real location harder to determine. Some browsers, such as Mullvad Browser, may do this automatically.

Limits#

Your ISP can’t see which websites you visit, but they can still see how much data you’re using and when you’re online.
Websites can also see other details about your device, like your screen size, browser type, and operating system, which can be used to identify you.
If you’re logged into a website (like Instagram), that site still knows who you are. A VPN hides your IP address, not your account. For better privacy, consider pairing a VPN with an email alias.

Browsers#

Tool	Price	Notes
Firefox Focus	Free	Available on Android and iOS. Clears all your browsing history when you close the app. Lightweight and runs well on older, low-end phones.
DuckDuckGo	Free	Available on PC, Android, and iOS. Doesn’t clear your data automatically when you close it, but has a fire button that wipes everything in one tap.
Brave	Free	Available on PC, Android, and iOS. Fast on iPhone. On PC, it has a private window option that routes traffic through Tor, but the connection doesn’t always work.

Email#

Tool	Price	Notes
Proton Mail	Free	Based in Switzerland. Offers end-to-end encryption using OpenPGP, which is a standard protocol. Note that OpenPGP does not encrypt the subject line of emails.
Tutanota	Free	Based in Germany. Uses its own encryption protocol, which allows it to also encrypt the subject line when sending between Tutanota accounts. For emails to outside accounts, it falls back to OpenPGP like Proton Mail.

Both providers publish yearly transparency reports showing how many data requests they’ve received from governments and law enforcement. They generally only release data when required by a court order. Because they encrypt user data and store very little of it on their servers, they cannot easily hand over readable information. To get around this, law enforcement would have to target a specific account and ask the provider to inject code into the application. That code disables encryption for that account, so from then on, when the user logs in and uses their email, the messages are no longer encrypted and can be read.

Email Aliases#

An email alias is a disposable address that forwards messages to your real inbox. You give the alias to a website instead of your real email, so the site never sees your actual address.

Use an alias when you sign up for something you don’t fully trust, like a newsletter, a free trial, or a random online store. If that alias starts getting spam, you can turn it off without affecting your main email.

Tool	Price	Notes
Proton Pass	Free (10 aliases)	Comes with a password manager built in.
SimpleLogin	Free (10 aliases)	Also owned by Proton Mail. Has a simpler interface, so it’s a good pick if you trust Proton Mail and just need email aliases.
AnonAddy	Free (unlimited aliases)	$1/month if you want to send replies from an alias or need a higher monthly email limit.

I don’t recommend self-hosting your own alias domain. If you’re the only person using a particular domain, it’s much easier to trace the aliases back to you.

Messenger#

Tool	Price	Notes
Signal	Free	End-to-end encrypted by default for all messages and calls, but requires a phone number.

Signal doesn’t store messages on its servers, so when it receives data requests from law enforcement, it has very little to share. According to its transparency reports, the only data it can provide is the date an account was created and the last time it connected to Signal.

Signal has been used by the U.S. Department of War. One notable leak occurred not because of a flaw in Signal, but due to human error: someone added the wrong person to a group chat. The biggest risk with Signal is user error.

AI#

Tool	Price	Notes
Duck AI	Free	Made by DuckDuckGo. It’s like ChatGPT but you don’t need an account and there’s no limit on how much you can chat. You can pick from different models, like GPT-5.4 mini and Claude Haiku 4.5.

These tools can improve your privacy, but none of them make you fully anonymous. Use whatever fits your situation.