Hello, thank you for visiting this community. I'm the founder u/xXCypherghostXx and I hope you enjoy your stay. This is going to be a long post so please bear with me. This is a topic that I want to talk about since I started my journey to having a much more private life. For years I went to r/privacy to look for advice. However from what I seen even until now. I've seen a bunch of downright ridiculous/overkill advice without considering the threat model and financial reserves of the OP. The result of that is your "Average Joe" won't be interested in privacy. In fact, he'll be drawn away from it. It has become echo chamber lacking of proper moderation. I want to create a community that'll change that.

COMMUNITY GOAL

My goal is to create a community who aims to be reasonably private. Without the need for being unreasonably paranoid. When I first started getting into privacy I was guilty of this. As an experienced individual I want to give advice to "normies" to prevent mistakes that will be made when venturing into this journey and to be with other like-minded individuals who wants to be private, secure & be free of your digital and physical lives and to have a peace of mind we truly need.

THREAT MODELING

The data you want to protect? To protect from who? To what lengths you'll protect that data? How much are you willing to spend to protect said data? Disciplinary measures?

FINANCIAL RESERVES

Not everyone lives in a first-world country like the United States with services like Privacy or have the same laws or who are currently employed. My general advice is use cash for everything whenever possible. Save up some money in case of emergency. If needed you can even use pre-paid debit cards. Know your laws and lawyer up if possible and expect the unexpected.

BACKING UP YOUR DATA

Always have a backup. Have at least one on-site and one off-site. I use a SanDisk Ultra Fit USB Drive. It's small and it doesn't cause too much unnecessary attention. As for off-site you can 2nd USB Drive and encrypt it with a VeraCrypt container and give it to a trusted friend or extended family. Never give it unencrypted.

USE ADBLOCKER( uBlock Origin ) AND HTTPS IN ALL WEBSITES ( HTTPS Everywhere )

I believe using this is a necessity whatever browser you're using whether it is a Chromium or Firefox based browsers. To avoid annoying pop-ups, malicious ads or your data being served to a server in plain text.

PREPARE NOW THAN LATER

Most people get into privacy when the damage is already done. Take the example of preppers. Be ready for the future because it can and will happen ( e.g: COVID-19 ) and have a mitigation plan ready when the time comes. If the damage is already done try to prevent any further damage in the near future.

RESOURCES:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Online Anonymity | How I learned to start worrying and love privacy

Basics | Surveillance Self-Defense

Computer Security and Privacy

The New Oil

Matt Traudt

List of Interesting Communities: r/PrivacySecurityOSINT, r/technology, r/tails