Introduction

This book is dedicated to all those good people who give their time and energy, and sometimes in some places, their freedom or even their lives, to do something they truly value. This is a book on anonymity and privacy in this lush forest full of data hunters called the internet.

Every species in this jungle has one thing in common: they all have data they want to protect. Even if they don't want to admit it, even if they say they have nothing to hide—and maybe they're right—I don’t hide my credit card credentials, but I never want anyone I don’t trust to have their hands on them. And that’s what privacy is.

Privacy is a human right, and nobody should have the right to take it away from someone else. Unfortunately, we live in a world where our rights mean nothing. Companies, doxxers, governments, spy agencies—everyone violates our right to privacy every day. They won’t stop; they profit from our data. Our data is the foundation of their businesses. We are the ones who need to stop handing over our data (to some degree at least, without making our lives miserable and unnecessarily hard).

Some might call this need for privacy paranoia, but protecting yourself and your loved ones from future harm is not paranoia. Think of privacy as insurance. You might trust your government today, you might trust your messenger with your messages, you might trust Google with your whole life, but remember, Satan was once an angel too. Anyone can turn evil; any government can become corrupt and dictatorial. You wouldn’t want them to know every single second of your life when they do.

Privacy nowadays is not possible without security. Your data needs to be secure to authorize those you want to have access to it. You should expect that everything you put online will be read and opened one day. All you can trust with your data is encryption algorithms and the mathematics behind them that ensure their security and reliability. However, even the most secure encryption algorithms might be broken one day, and it's good to keep that in mind.

Privacy and security are also the building blocks of anonymity. You will need both to stay anonymous. Anonymity is when people see what you do, what you want them to see, but they can't know who is actually behind those actions. It is similar to privacy, but in privacy, they know who you are, but they don’t know what you’re doing.

This book is free, not just in the sense that it costs nothing to read, but free as in freedom. It is a side project of mine, written in my free time under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This license allows anyone to share and copy it in any medium and make changes to it, as long as they give credit to the author and indicate the changes they’ve made. Additionally, this license does not permit commercial use.

I’m not doing this for profit; if I wanted money, I would have worked for it. This book and all other projects of mine are driven by my passion for creating free content and software that I think could help others who need them. However, I accept and greatly appreciate donations, as they allow me to spend more time on what I value and not worry as much about working another job that I don’t like just to make a living. If you find my work helpful or want to support what I do, please check the donation section of this book.

This book isn’t meant for criminals, terrorists, racists, or anyone who wants to hide their wrongdoings. It is for human rights activists, those fighting for freedom in places where it is not allowed, and those contributing something good to society rather than tearing it apart. It’s for the heroes who need to wear a mask to protect themselves and their loved ones, not for the supervillains.