← Educate Yourself

Tools & Sites

What actually helps. Partial defences against a system built with far more resources than any individual can counter — plus tools for understanding the mechanism.

How to read this page. Tap any underlined word to see the precise term and a short definition. Expand the "Deeper" box for the evidence and contested points. The main list works on its own.

Understand

Bad News game — getbadnews.com
A browser game of about 15 minutes where you play the role of a fake news creator, learning six documented manipulation techniques from the inside. Developed by DROG and Cambridge University researchers. The inoculation effect is real: research shows playing it builds resistance to the techniques it teaches that lasts for months when refreshed. Start here.

EFF Cover Your Tracks — coveryourtracks.eff.org
Shows you exactly what your browser reveals to trackers — how unique your browser fingerprint is, and how well your blockers actually work. Not an action tool but a demonstration tool: understanding what is visible is the first step.

Reduce tracking

uBlock Origin
The ad and tracker blocker this site recommends first. A browser extension — free, open-source, maintained by volunteers. The full extension now runs only in Firefox (and in Brave, which hosts it itself). Chrome, and Chromium browsers such as Edge, allow only uBlock Origin Lite: the full version is built on the older extension standard Google retired, and its developer says there is no version of it for the new one. Safari has not carried the full extension for years and also offers only Lite.

Firefox with Enhanced Tracking Protection
Mozilla's browser, with tracking protection on by default — known social-media trackers, cross-site tracking cookies and cryptominers are blocked in the standard setting. Not as comprehensive as uBlock Origin alone, but a reasonable default for users who want less configuration. Firefox is made by the Mozilla Corporation, a taxable company wholly owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

Specific settings and tools change faster than this page does. For current, device-level advice — phone privacy settings, VPNs, messaging, account security — use the guides that non-commercial institutions maintain as their job:

Surveillance Self-Defense — ssd.eff.org
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's step-by-step guides, organised by tool and by situation, continuously revised by a dedicated team. The reference standard for protecting yourself against both corporate and government surveillance.

Security Planner — securityplanner.consumerreports.org
Consumer Reports' free planner: answer a few questions about your devices and concerns, get a personalised, checkable action plan. No account needed. From the long-established non-profit consumer-testing organisation.

Data Detox Kit — datadetoxkit.org
Tactical Tech's accessible guides to privacy, digital wellbeing, and misinformation — short, friendly, and available in more than 40 languages.

Alternative search

DuckDuckGo — duckduckgo.com
No behavioural tracking, and ads chosen by the search page rather than by you. Results are not identical to Google's but are adequate for most searches. Free.

Ecosia — ecosia.org
Berlin-based and steward-owned: it cannot be sold, no one may take profits out of it, and the surplus goes to tree planting. Privacy is decent but not the point — Ecosia says it builds no personal profile and anonymises your IP address within seven days, but your IP address and your query go to its search partner — Google by default for eligible users, or Microsoft Bing if you choose it — and their ads fund it. Choose it for the incentive structure; choose the others here if privacy is your priority. Free.

Kagi — kagi.com
User-supported, no advertising model. The incentive structure differs: Kagi profits when users find it useful, not when they click ads. Paid subscription (from $5/month).

Reviewed news

Reuters, BBC News, AP
Wire services and public broadcasters whose incentive structure differs from algorithmically-curated feeds. Not perfect — ownership and institutional pressures apply to all — but the correction mechanisms are more visible. Go to source directly rather than through search or social media.

Cochrane Reviews — cochrane.org
For health information specifically: Cochrane produces systematic reviews of medical evidence, combining the studies on a question rather than reporting one of them. Rigorous, peer-reviewed, regularly updated, and independent of commercial funding by its own rule. Significantly more reliable than general search for medical questions.

Collaborative content

Wikipedia — wikipedia.org
Not a primary source. Subject to errors and manipulation. Better than almost any advertising-funded alternative because its failure modes are visible and documented. The correction mechanism works publicly — every edit is recorded in a page history, disputes are argued on the Talk page, and contested claims can be flagged. Use Wikipedia's reference lists: the citations at the bottom of well-maintained articles represent years of editorial work identifying primary sources. Start there, not with the article text. Free, non-commercial, non-profit.

Deeper — why every tool here is a partial defence, not a fix +

Notice what these tools can and cannot do. Browser tools (uBlock Origin, Firefox protection) cut browser-side tracking — cookies, scripts, fingerprinting attempts in the page. They do not stop real-time bidding, because the auction that broadcasts a profile to bidders happens server-side, between companies, regardless of what your browser blocks. Privacy search engines stop one company building a profile from your queries; they don't change the wider ad market. The inoculation tools change you — your resistance to manipulation — not the system.

This is deliberate framing, not defeatism. Individual tools meaningfully reduce your exposure and are worth using. But the design of the system means no combination of personal settings defeats it; that is precisely why the site treats structural change, not individual configuration, as the part of the answer that reaches the system. Use the tools, and support the structural work.

What to Do →