Privacy has become quite a hot topic in recent years, especially as more information becomes public about the extreme data harvesting techniques of big, corporate companies and governments. Phones have become a great way of collecting data on individual users, partly because just about every in the world has a phone and use them for everything from work to studies to personal communications, and even banking.

Everyone should have the right to digital privacy, and while we might not be able to stop all tracking on our phones, there are many ways of achieving better digital privacy without having to give up on the many conveniences that we’ve come to expect from our devices in the modern age.

Using Private Browsers

One of the biggest problems with modern browsers is that they can track an enormous amount of information about the user. Everything from searches to clicked links to sensitive information is recorded by the browser as it’s being used. The browsers that are really guilty of this are Chrome and Edge, and Chrome is known for the sheer volume of information is collects.

Thankfully, there are other options available, many of them offer increased privacy. Firefox, for example, runs an Android version of their popular browser, with many of the same features and add-ons. Brave is another choice, which uses the Chromium base on top of a number of privacy features.

Use A DNS Resolver

DNS is a complex technology that most people probably don’t want to worry too much about, but it’s important to know that it’s always a way for certain companies and third parties to track a device and the apps on it. There are a lot of ways to encrypt DNS, but the easiest are to use special apps that are designed to monitor all network activity as well as to block known address that are associated with tracking and data collection.

Two well-known apps that are worth having on an Android are Blokada and RethinkDNS. Most users should just be able to install these apps and switch them on, and not have to worry too much about what data is being sent out from the device, regardless of whether they’re watching videos, enjoying mobile betting, or sending emails.

Use Privacy-Centric Services

Most people that use an Android phone will almost certainly have a Google account that the device is linked to. This means that all of their most important services, such as email, are provided by Google and integrate well with Android’s Gmail app.

While this does mean more convenience, it also means that a user’s data is in the hands of a single entity. It’s also worth considering that Google is known for occasionally deleting or banning an account for no reason. Whatever the case, a user should try and diverse the number of entities that they rely on. For example, switching over to a privacy-centric email service like Tutanota or Proton Mail is a good way of keeping email communications private and properly encrypted.