Your Ultimate Privacy and Security Toolkit

Malware doesn’t care about your budget. You need antivirus, whether you have the funds for it or not. With the free Avast One Basic, you get cross-platform antivirus protection that earns top scores from international testing labs. Beyond antivirus, it ropes in a raft of suite-level features, things like firewall, ransomware protection, VPN, a network inspector and more. Got no cash? Get this app.

If a ninja-level hacker (or a nosy relative) gets access to your computer, all your secrets are exposed. Unless, that is, you were smart enough to encrypt those secrets. AxCrypt Premium handles keeping your secrets confidential with a minimum of fuss. Drag a file in, it’s encrypted—boom! And you can work on your encrypted files without hindrance, or share them with trusted compadres.

You can kick the tires before buying a new car, but there’s not much you can do to vet a new antivirus. You need to ask the experts, and the experts at antivirus testing labs around the world say Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is a winner. Besides powerful protection against malware it includes defense against ransomware, malicious websites, attacks on your banking, and more. This antivirus packs in more protective features than many security suites.

Everything online requires a password these days, from sensitive bank accounts to coupons at your local grocer. They need to be complex so nobody can guess, and unique so one exposed password doesn’t reveal all your secrets. The only way to manage both those requirements is with a password manager. Bitwarden hands all the basics of password management plus a wealth of high-end features, at no cost to you.

You’re concerned about big corporations tracking you as you roam the wild wild web…but  you’re using a browser made by Apple, Google, or Microsoft? To really maintain privacy, you should consider a third-party privacy-focused browser. Brave Privacy Browser is a favorite of ours, with powerful ad and tracker blocking, plus protection against browser fingerprinting. It even lets you earn cryptocurrency while you browse.

What’s the point of trying to protect your privacy when you have to give out your email address everywhere you go? Here’s the key—don’t give your real address. With a temporary email service like Cloaked, each site you interact with gets a unique “cloaked” address, one that you can delete if you start to get spam. Managing these cloaked emails is a lot like managing passwords…so naturally Cloaked does both.

It’s great to use a password manager, but if some jerk steals or shoulder-surfs your master password, you’re hosed. That’s why we advise using multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible. Authenticating through an app is more secure than SMS-based systems, and Google Authenticator is the grandaddy of authenticator apps. It lagged behind some similar services for a while, but came back swinging in recent updates.

You give up a lot of personal information for the privilege of shopping online—email, phone, credit card, delivery address. With IronVest, the merchant receives masked email, phone, and credit card data, not your real ones. You still have to give your address, to receive your purchase, but your privacy gets a big boost. Add bonuses like password management and online tracker blocking and you’ve got a serious weapon for your privacy arsenal.

Email was invented by academics to share ideas. They never imagined anyone would steal other people’s messages. Sending an email is about as secure as writing your message on a postcard. For truly private communication, you want an email encryption utility like PreVeil. PreVeil mail is end-to-end encrypted, visible only on your device and the recipient’s. You can even securely share files over this private connection. And it’s free!

Antivirus protection is important, but getting a full-blown security suite isn’t hugely more expensive. Bitdefender Total Security builds on award-winning antivirus protection and adds a vast number of features to protect your data, your devices, and your privacy. It works on all your devices, whether they run Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS, and an online dashboard lets you remotely keep track of all your protected devices.

Why should hackers steal your personal data when it’s all over the internet? Just web-search your name and you’ll see that data aggregators and people search websites know all about you. You can’t keep them from collecting your public data, but with the help of a personal data removal service you can make them delete what they’ve got. We like Privacy Bee because it checks for your data on over 440 websites at no charge. You only pay if you want it to handle removals.

Antivirus utilities, firewalls, and other applications run on your PCs and other devices, so their protection ends when your data travels to the web. A virtual private network (VPN) protects data on the move by routing it through an encrypted connection to a secure VPN server. This also serves to mask your location. With excellent privacy policies, plenty of servers, and a powerful free edition, Proton VPN is our favorite among the many VPNs available.

Short message service (SMS), aka texting, is to phones what email is to computers—an early-days technology that lacks security protections. Apple’s iMessage is better, but only between Apple users. For truly private messaging, you need a dedicated, security-focused app like Signal. You don’t have to give up features like video chat, group chat, or stickers—Signal includes all the fun bits without compromising the privacy of your connections.

Big corporations deploy antivirus and other security programs to all their computers, but they also have security devices patrolling their networks and heading off trouble. Firewalla Purple brings hardware security to ordinary folks who have a bit of tech expertise. A mobile app lets you oversee as it monitors your network and devices, and it can impose controls on gaming, porn, and video. You can configure it to run all your internet traffic through a VPN, or to be a VPN server itself.

You can lock down your devices and data to perfection, but a goof at a mega-corporation can spill your private details to the world, possibly resulting in identity theft. Norton 360 With LifeLock monitors the Dark Web for any sign of exposure, keeps tabs on your credit rating, and generally watches for trouble. If your identity gets stolen despite precautions, Norton’s experts will help you recover, spending millions if needed. Besides all this, it comes with top-notch security suite protection for your devices.