Common threats
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These are some common threats people face when they're thinking about defending their privacy and security. You may be concerned with none, one, a few, or all of these possibilities, and the plan you make depends on what your individual goals are.
2. Common threat overview
These are the general categories of potential threats/adversaries we'll be covering in this section:
- De-Anonymization - Shielding your online activity from your real identity, protecting you from people who are trying to uncover your identity specifically.
- Targeted Attacks - Being protected from hackers or other malicious actors who are trying to gain access to your data or devices specifically.
- Passive Attacks - Being protected from things like malware, data breaches, and other attacks that are made against many people at once.
- Supply Chain Attacks - A vulnerability or exploit introduced into otherwise good software either directly or through a dependency from a third party.
- Service Providers - Protecting your data from service providers (e.g. with E2EE, which renders your data unreadable to the server).
- Mass Surveillance - Protection from government agencies, organizations, websites, and services which work together to track your activities.
- Surveillance Capitalism - Protecting yourself from big advertising networks, like Google and Facebook, as well as a myriad of other third-party data collectors.
- Public Exposure - Limiting the information about you that is accessible online—to search engines or the general public.
- Censorship - Avoiding censored access to information or being censored yourself when speaking online.