Everyday Privacy

The 10-Minute Privacy Checkup

Ten settings, chosen for impact rather than completeness. None of them require special technical skill, and you can stop at any point and still be better off than when you started.

This is not a comprehensive audit and it is not going to make you invisible online. It is a short, ordered list of the settings that give you the most privacy benefit for the least effort, spread across the places most people's data actually leaks from: the phone in your pocket, the browser you use daily, the accounts tying everything together, your main messaging app, and the smart TV in your living room. Work through them in order, skip anything that does not apply to you, and expect the whole thing to take about ten minutes.

  1. Turn off App Tracking Transparency for apps you don’t trust (iPhone)

    Stops apps from linking your activity across other apps and websites to build an ad profile.

    See the full iOS privacy guide →

  2. Delete your advertising ID (Android)

    Removes the persistent identifier that apps and ad networks use to track you across apps.

    See the full Android privacy guide →

  3. Block third-party cookies in your browser

    Third-party cookies are the most common way sites and ad networks follow you around the web.

    See the full Chrome privacy guide →

  4. Turn on your browser’s stronger safe browsing / phishing protection

    Warns you before you land on known malicious or phishing sites, at the cost of sharing more browsing data with the browser maker for that check.

    See the full Chrome privacy guide →

  5. Turn off or auto-delete Web & App Activity in your Google Account

    This is the single largest store of your search, location, and app activity that Google keeps.

    See the full Google account guide →

  6. Turn off personalized ads in your Apple Account

    Limits how Apple uses your App Store, Apple News, and Stocks activity to target ads, without affecting iCloud or device features.

    See the full Apple account guide →

  7. Review ad personalization in Meta’s Accounts Center

    One setting affects ad targeting across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp at once.

    See the full Meta account guide →

  8. Turn on two-step verification for your main messaging app

    Protects against SIM-swap attacks and unauthorized account transfers, which matter more than most message-content risks.

    See the full WhatsApp privacy guide →

  9. Turn off Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) on your smart TV

    ACR reports what you watch, from any source, back to the TV maker for advertising. It is on by default on nearly every brand.

    See the full Samsung TV privacy guide →

  10. Turn off "Improve the model for everyone" in ChatGPT

    This setting is on by default for consumer accounts, meaning your conversations can be used to train future models unless you disable it.

    See the full ChatGPT privacy guide →

If you only do three of these, the advertising ID / App Tracking Transparency setting, the ad personalization review on your main account, and the smart TV ACR toggle cover the most ground. There is no pressure to do all ten today, and doing none of them does not make you careless: this list exists because most of these settings are buried on purpose.