1. Introduction

Balancing security, privacy, and usability is one of the first and most difficult tasks you'll face on your privacy journey. Everything is a trade-off: The more secure something is, the more restricting or inconvenient it generally is, etc. Often, people find that the problem with the tools they see recommended is that they're just too hard to start using!

If you wanted to use the most secure tools available, you'd have to sacrifice a lot of usability. And, even then, nothing is ever fully secure. There's high security, but never full security. That's why threat models are important.

So, what are these threat models, anyway?

A threat model is a list of the most probable threats to your security and privacy endeavors. Since it's impossible to protect yourself against every attack(er), you should focus on the most probable threats. In computer security, a threat is an event that could undermine your efforts to stay private and secure.

Focusing on the threats that matter to you narrows down your thinking about the protection you need, so you can choose the tools that are right for the job.