Acknowledgements

This book was a mess, is a mess, and will be a mess because I refused to use AI to write it. The content and structure are poorly written by me. I am not a writer, not a native English speaker, and I have no idea what I am doing (in terms of writing a book, of course). But this book is not AI-free; I have used AI only and ONLY to fix my grammar mistakes (where I don’t have that many, to be honest) and my misspellings. Although the AI might have decided that my human mind’s vocabulary is not complex enough for the readers of this book and changed them (which are fixed and rewritten in the review), I would rather write a poorly structured book, with the vocabulary of a 10-year-old, than have it written by a soulless algorithm, as everything is nowadays. So AI has been ONLY a tool to fix grammar and misspellings of this book; it has had no influence on the content, structure, wordings, and tone. If it is bad, that is my fault, and I take full responsibility for it.

Writing this book wouldn't have been possible if it weren’t for those boring classes I had to take at the university last term. The boredom they gave me made me start the book that I had wanted to start for years, and for the moral support of the good friends who stood by me and wish to remain unnamed.

I would like to thank all the good people at Techlore, PrivacyGuides, and PrivSec, from whom I learned a lot, and some of whom were really good friends, although they might not know me by this name. They do a great job at informing people about privacy and security and providing up-to-date and well-selected guides on privacy and security.

Most of the content of this book is from a period of fear and paranoia that took over my life in the middle of 2020, which was probably due to COVID and isolation, but it made me go crazy about privacy and anonymity, and most of my knowledge comes from those not-so-pleasant days of my life. Although learning and implementing these privacy practices weren’t pleasant at the time, sharing them definitely was, and I’m glad that I did so.