my recommendations for staying private online
Semicolon's abridged list of various privacy tools and resources:
With the rise of neofascism in America and the existence of fascism in plenty of other countries, I want to compile a list of various resources and tools that can be used for privacy and security. This list is for queer people who want to get more involved in fighting fascism or who just care about their privacy and don't want to take any risks. A lot of these tools and more info about them can be found at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/ (please look at privacy guides before using any of these tools). If a tool isn't on this list, it's probably on Privacy Guides.
This list will be updated as I come across more tools that can be used.
The EFF has a guide to defending against surveillance, and I would highly recommend giving it a read: https://ssd.eff.org/
Various tools for private and secure communication exist and are free to use most of the time.
One of the most common secure communication platforms is Signal, which uses end-to-end encryption to make it difficult for people to access your data. Although vulnerabilities to E2EE exist, it remains a very popular way of encrypting communications between two people. Variations of the Signal protocol have been adopted for use in other software, such as WhatsApp, but Signal's official app is still the one I recommend you use: https://www.signal.org/
Another good app for private communication(athough admittedly more complex) is SimpleX, which is more decentralized and puts more of an emphasis on anonymity. Your data can be imported and exported from the app if needed: https://simplex.chat/
For email, I would recommend using Proton Mail or some other encrypted service
A wide variety of web browsers exist for privacy, and most of them are much more extensive than so-called "incognito mode".
The de facto standard for private web browsing is Tor(short for The Onion Router). This encrypts your searches in three layers of encryption and sends it through three relays(just computers programmed to run as Tor relays), each relay peeling back one layer of encryption. The last relay then sends the data to the website you want, which provides anonymity. However, it should also be noted that Tor has a lot of sites on it that are, well, legally questionable, and I would not recommend you use it unless you know what you're doing. If you do know what you're doing, you can find it here: https://torproject.org
NOTE: Do not use Tor for illegal stuff, like DDoS'ing or pirating. Not only will it be ineffective and take up bandwith on the network, but you also just shouldn't do it on general.
If you use Mullvad VPN(more on VPNs later), you are able to use the mullvad browser, which was developed in collaboration with the Tor Project: https://mullvad.net/en
For use regularly, I recommend using Firefox with uBlock origin: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?redirect_source=firefox-com, https://ublockorigin.com/
My personal recommendation for a VPN would be Mullvad, which is inexpensive and is based out of a more VPN-friendly country, meaning it can get away with not storing your data. If you can't pay for a VPN, go with Proton. But please stay away from crappy free VPNs on the app store, as those do not provide good security in the slightest
https://mullvad..net https://protonvpn.com/
One common search engine for privacy is DuckDuckGo, which is an easy to use option for a private search engine and does the job well, especially when paired with a good browser and ad blocker, like Firefox and uBlock origin. It also has a .onion service for use on Tor: https://duckduckgo.com
Another good option, although extremely hit or miss unless you self-host it, is SearxNG. This is a metasearch engine, which means it pulls a bunch of results from various search engines and compiles them together. Again, though, using public instances is extremely hit or miss unless you host it yourself, which costs money: https://searx.space/
This isn't 100% necessary, but still a good practice. Use either Bitwarden or KeepassXC