So without going into drastic detail I got into a rather ugly debate with a fellow on reddit about cyber security. Needless to say he was all over the place and went from talking about hiding form your ISP all the way to hiding from the NSA. Basically I couldn't get through to the man. I told him there's literally a hundred different setups depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Most people will only need a few things for general security. This is opinionated of course and I'm certainly not the best and brightest. But first you should secure your DNS over a transport layering security protocol (aka TLS). Then download firefox, go to about:config, and make sure security.ssl3.rsa_des_ede3_sha is set to false. You'll also want to make sure that security.tls.version.min is set to 3. After this make sure you enable HTTPS everywhere. Now, as for general purposes, this will suffice for most people. You may also consider using a encrypted email service such as tutanota or protonmail. Although if your doing criminal shit PGP encryption is the only way to go. However, even though your data is encrypted, none of this really does anything for anonymity, hence the secure part minus the anonymous part.
For anonymity, we need to do a few more things. Firstly, heading back to about:config. You'll want to disable geo location, and tell firefox to resist fingerprinting. Also set all telemetry settings to false. You'll also want to make sure Java and Flash are disabled. Then go to "settings" in firefox and make sure firefox never stores any history, always leaves tracking protection on, enable always send out do not track signals, and turn off data collection. You're pretty much set, you could take it a step further and disable webRTC and set up a socks5 proxy to bypass censorship and hide your IP. But honestly you should probably just set up a bridge and use tor for that. Now if someone was looking to do some criminal shit then all bets are off. Something such as ordering drugs off the darknet requires something a little extra.
Assuming you already have a alternate mailing address or PO box under a alternate identity you would probably want to use a burner laptop with tails os at a public wifi spot, or really just anywhere that's not on your own network. When you're done, power down and make sure you DO NOT use this laptop for any other purposes. Again, another setup for an entirely different reason, say you're a whistle blower or something of that nature and you've got sensitive data that people would kill over. Your best bet would probably be to run whonix through qubes os. Needless to say, hiding from your ISPs or protecting your data form rookie hackers is a lot different from saying invisible to the NSA. When it comes to the NSA most people do not need to hide from a entity only collecting metadata that's probably never going to get pulled back up again. However I suppose it's possible to disappear from their detection. But it takes a lot more then some web configurations and security protocols. Do you own a smart phone? Got a social media account? Are you in a criminal database anywhere? If so facial recognition will get you. Do you drive a vehicle that's newer then a 2009 model? Do you own or rent property? If IRS has you then NSA can get you. Does USPS run where you're living? These are all questions you need to ask yourself and these are also all things you would need to get rid of if you expect to even have a shot at flying under the NSA's nose.
