Jesse McGraw knows a few things about black hat hacking. He was a participant himself and was convicted of corrupting industrial control systems. Over at Forklog he has an interesting article on some steps you can take to protect yourself from surveillance.
The surveillance, he says, comes from all sides. There are, of course, criminals trying to scam you or collect information they can sell but that’s by no means all. You also have to contend with the execrable adtech industry that’s vacuuming up every bit of data about you that they can. They want to know every site you visit and every advertisement you look at. Sadly, they’re pretty good at this.
Finally, there’s the government. If they want information on you in particular, you’re doomed; the NSA will open a local branch inside your computer and collect an exact record of everything you do online. Happily most of us aren’t going to excite the NSA’s interest but don’t imagine you’re safe. As Irreal has discussed many times, the NSA is busily gathering as much digital data as it can even if they can’t look at it all. They simply store it just in case.
McGraw’s article recommends some applications that can help. The first is Signal. It’s the gold standard of secure messaging apps but everybody you want to communicate with also has to be using it. Tor and Tails can help you maintain anonymity and browse securely. McGraw describes Tails as “government censorships’ worst nightmare.” Other suggestions are a VPN, Firefox, ProtonMail, Sandboxie, DuckDuckGo, and Startpage. See McGraw’s article for the details.
There’s no magic bullet, of course, but McGraw’s suggestions can help keep all but the most determined Nosy Parkers out of your business.