5 Free Privacy Tools for Protecting Your Personal Data

"Here’s how to block trackers, hide your email address, and more."

- By Jared Newman

I deally, protecting your privacy shouldn’t require hours of time or gobs of money. Instead of having to meticulously manage all the personal data that’s floating around on the internet, you should be able to minimize data collection automatically or proactively. If you value privacy like I do, you’ll want to check out the following apps and tools. While some have premium versions for certain features, all of them are free to use.

1. STOP MOBILE TRACKERS WITH LOCKDOWN

Tech giants like Google and Facebook aren’t the only ones trying to collect data about you. Many other apps also collect details about your phone, your usage patterns, and possibly your location, then ship it offto analytics firms and advertisers (fave. co/32x4l87).

Lockdown is a free and simple utility for iOS (fave.co/3rQ1BeI) and Mac (fave. co/3u5FhR1) that prevents apps from connecting with these data trackers. I’ve had it on my iPhone since January and in that time it’s blocked more than 1 million tracking attempts in a completely unobtrusive way. Until sitting down to write this newsletter, I’d forgotten that I’d set it up already.

Keep in mind that Lockdown is not a VPN, so it’s not routing any of your internet traffic through its own servers to mask your location, but I think that’s mostly a positive since it doesn’t interfere with connectivity. If you do want a VPN service, however, Lockdown sells it as an add-on subscription. (One other note: The app can hinder your ability to log into Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, but turning it offwhile logging in seems to solve the problem.)