We’re the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an independent non-profit working to protect online privacy for over thirty years. This is Surveillance Self-Defense: our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying. Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) is a guide to protecting yourself from electronic surveillance for people all over the world. Some aspects of this guide will be useful to people with very little technical knowledge, while others are aimed at an audience with considerable technical expertise and privacy/security trainers. We believe that everyone’s threat model is unique.

• Read the BASICS to find out how online surveillance works.
• Dive into our TOOL GUIDES for instructions to installing our pick of the best, most secure applications.
• We have more detailed information in our FURTHER LEARNING sections.
• If you’d like a guided tour, look for our list of common SECURITY SCENARIOS.