My Privacy-First Tech Stack
A growing community of users (myself included) have embraced a tech stack built around privacy-first, security-oriented tools. These applications and services are designed from the ground up to keep data safe with powerful encryption techniques.
The goal is to handle everyday tasks (email, chating, browsing, storage, documents, AI tools, etc) with tools that embrace privacy-first design, even if the data is synced on cloud services. I believe enhanced privacy and security is the natural evolution of the internet, and using privacy-first tools like the ones talked about in this article is a step into the future.
As a business owner, I know privacy is important. Almost everyone in business knows privacy is important for so many reasons. If you're not sure, here's a quick list: obligations to privacy laws, customer trust, competitive advantage, fraud prevention, intellectual property, general security and safety, I could go on...
I've personally asked a lot of people if browser bookmarks are personal and private, and they almost all said yes. Businesses put software restrictions in place even when they know their workflow may be less efficient, privacy remains a priority. It's not hard to understand if you follow data breaches in the news. When there is a breach, all your data instantly becomes public record. This is why I prefer to rely on services that use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and a zero-knowledge/privacy-focused architecture.
Here is a compiled selection of tools that reflect this same standard of privacy, each offering encrypted communication or data handling that ensures only the user and not the provider can access the contents. These are not just theoretical ideals, they are concrete implementations of a better, more secure workflow. Below you will find a table of the tools I talk about in this post. Then I will go into more detail about each tool and explain why I used it.
| Category | Suggested | Reasoning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📧 | Secure Email | ProtonMail | End-to-end encrypted email with zero-access architecture. Protects message contents and strips IP metadata. |
| 💬 | Secure Messaging | Signal | Uses the Signal Protocol for E2EE messaging and calls. No metadata retention. Offers sealed sender for enhanced anonymity. |
| 🔐 | Password Manager | Bitwarden | Zero-knowledge encrypted vault for logins, notes, and credentials. All metadata including URLs are encrypted client-side. |
| ☁️ | Cloud Storage | Proton Drive | Cloud storage with client-side encryption. Providers prevent server-side access to data. Zero-knowledge architecture. |
| 🔖 | Bookmark Manager | WebCull | End-to-end encrypted bookmark manager. AES-256-GCM encryption of links, titles, icons, folder structures and all meta data. Cloud sync without visibility. |
| 🌐 | General Browsing | Zen Browser | Great Privacy Policy. No Tracking. Privacy-Focused. Striped Down Firefox. Open-Source. Active Development. |
| 🤖 | AI Assistants | Ollama | Open source. Local only. |
Like all of WebCull blog posts, none of these recommendations are paid endorsements. I have no financial interest in any of the tools I recommend, and I do not receive any compensation for mentioning them. I am simply talking about what I use and personally recommend.
I didn't mention a VPN in this list but it goes without saying that they provide an additional layer of security and privacy. I also didn't mention Tor because it's overkill in my personal workflow. I will use it from time to time if I need to check something quickly from a different IP address but that's a very limited use case espeically when you're already using a VPN.
There are clearly more tools out there that could fill in the gaps, and I may have not discovered them all, but I have left some tools out that after testing, did not meet my standards in terms of reliability.
Communication is Key
Based in privacy-friendly Switzerland, ProtonMail automatically encrypts emails such that only you and your intended recipient can read the contents. While more mainstream services like Gmail are also starting to offer the same features, While it's great to see the industry moving in this direction, ProtonMail has had this for years, and is unique in its continued commitment to privacy-first design. All messages stored on ProtonMail’s servers are in encrypted form, even ProtonMail’s own staff cannot read your inbox because they simply don’t possess the decryption keys. This means ProtonMail cannot scan your messages or hand them over in plaintext to third parties, it's just not possible. It also strips away IP addresses from email headers and minimizes other identifying metadata as much as possible.
Due to how email works, certain metadata like the sender and recipient addresses must remain for routing, but ProtonMail encrypts everything it can, even subject lines are stored encrypted on their servers to protect them from intruders. The service is open source and uses time-tested cryptography (an implementation of OpenPGP under the hood), which gives me confidence because the code is auditable and the encryption model is well-vetted by experts. The result is an email inbox where private messages actually feel private – there’s no scanning for ads, no data mining, and strong protection against unauthorized access.
While ProtonMail is a solid choice for email, secure messaging is equally important for real-time chats and calls. I want something where I can be sure that my messages will not be leaked in the next data breach. My choice is Signal, a messaging app renowned for its end-to-end encryption protocol. Every Signal message is encrypted such that only the intended recipient’s device can decrypt and read it. Signal’s encryption is so robust and widely trusted that even larger platforms like WhatsApp have adopted the same underlying Signal Protocol for their chats.
What sets Signal apart for a privacy-focused user is its stance on metadata: Signal retains virtually no usable information about your conversations. Thanks to features like sealed sender (which hides who is messaging whom) and its practice of not logging contacts or message history on the server, Signal tries to ensure that even if someone subpoenaed their servers, there’d be little to reveal. In fact, Signal’s servers don’t even know your contacts or the contents of your messages, the service doesn’t want that data. As the Signal team puts it, "we don’t know who is sending you messages, and we don’t have access to your address book or profile information". Only encrypted blobs of data pass through their infrastructure, which are useless without the keys on our devices. Using Signal feels as close to a confidential in-person chat as one can get on the internet, messages disappear at your discretion, and every call or text is for your eyes only. For the security-conscious, that peace of mind is priceless, even if the network is monitored, the actual content remains gibberish to eavesdroppers. Between ProtonMail and Signal, personal communications, whether long-form email or instant chat, are locked down with strong encryption and shielded from potential data breaches.
Passwords and Credentials with End-to-End Encryption
No privacy-oriented tool stack would be complete without a secure way to manage passwords and different types of credentials. For me, the cornerstone here is Bitwarden, a password manager that I’ve chosen for its solid security architecture and openness. Bitwarden stores all my logins, passwords, keys, and sensitive notes, all in an encrypted vault, and crucially, that encryption happens on my own devices before anything reaches Bitwarden’s cloud servers. In practice, this means Bitwarden implements end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption. I hold the keys, and the server never sees secrets in plaintext. Even if someone breached Bitwarden’s servers, all they’d get is ciphertext protected with AES-256 encryption that’s virtually impossible to crack. Bitwarden can’t reset or peek at my master password (they literally never receive it), so I’m in control of my data at all times. Additionally, Bitwarden goes the extra mile in protecting metadata. You wouldn't want to leave clues like the names or URLs of your saved sites unencrypted (which could reveal your online services usage), but Bitwarden encrypts all of that information too. In my vault, even the folder names and web addresses are scrambled, so Bitwarden as a company learns next to nothing about what’s inside.
The less anyone (even the service itself) knows about my accounts, the better. It's less responsibility with sensitive data for everyone. Additionally, Bitwarden is open source and has undergone security audits, which provides an extra layer of assurance. In daily use, it means you can generate and store complex, unique passwords for every site, auto-fill them across browsers or devices, and know that they’re locked away behind a master key only you possess. With Bitwarden’s end-to-end encrypted vault guarding my digital keys, I feel much more secure storing credentials on my device or in a cloud service, since even a breach of one service won’t compromise my entire kingdom of logins.
Cloud Storage: Securing Files with Client-Side Encryption
Storing files in the cloud is very convenient, but it naturally comes with a privacy cost, trust you have with the provider not to look or leak what you store. I eliminate that dilemma by storing confidential files in cloud storage services that implement true end-to-end encryption. One excellent example is ProtonDrive, a service built around zero-knowledge, end-to-end encrypted cloud storage. In ProtonDrive, files are encrypted on my computer or phone before being uploaded; every file and even related metadata is scrambled with strong encryption (AES-256) using keys I control
Unlike services that only encrypt data *at rest* on their servers, ProtonDrive never has access to the keys needed to decrypt your files. That means no one at the company, no third party, and no system administrator can peer into your documents, the way it should be! It’s encryption done right, everything happens on your end, and the cloud is treated simply as a dumb storage layer, not a trusted participant.
The key takeaway is this: if you’re storing anything confidential in the cloud, assume the storage provider can be breached by hackers, subpoenaed, or sold to another company with different policies. If you encrypt first on device, you’ve already neutralized the biggest risk.
Bookmarks – Private Bookmark Management
One often-overlooked source of personal data is your browser bookmarks. Think about it, bookmarks can paint a pretty detailed picture of your interests, research, future plans, and much more. Many people sync bookmarks through cloud services without end-to-end encryption turned on, which is convenient but usually means a copy of all those bookmarks resides on a server, which is breachable, and often not encrypted in a truly private way. WebCull is a privacy-focused bookmark manager that offers end-to-end encryption of all your saved links, metadata, folders, and icons. When I save a bookmark with WebCull, it’s encrypted on my device using my passphrase before it gets uploaded to WebCull’s cloud.
This client-side encryption means WebCull’s servers never see the actual URLs or titles, they just store encrypted blobs. Only my devices, where I’ve entered my E2EE passphrase, can decrypt and display the bookmark data. In practice, it feels seamless. I have browser extensions that let me bookmark and organize pages into collections, and I can access my bookmarks from any device after logging in. But under the hood, WebCull ensures that I am the only one who can make sense of that data. WebCull uses strong AES-256-GCM encryption, which is an industry-standard cipher, the same level of encryption trusted by governments and banks, and the other tools in this list. The passphrase I set for WebCull’s encryption never leaves my hands; WebCull never knows it, and without it WebCull can’t decrypt my bookmarks.
One practical benefit (beyond privacy) is that I don’t worry about a data breach, if WebCull’s databases were compromised, an attacker would only get dumb scrambled data that is impossible to crack. Using WebCull gives me peace of mind that I can organize the articles, references, plans, resources, and websites I’ve saved over time without divulging my interests to anyone but myself, much like a journal. It’s a neutral territory, I get the convenience of cloud syncing and backup, but the contents remain my secret. In my view, bookmarks deserve the same protection as messages or files, and WebCull has slotted nicely into my stack to provide that protection in any browser I use.
Browse with Privacy in Mind
Zen Browser is a Firefox-based, open-source browser designed with a strong emphasis on privacy and user-centric features. While it doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption automatically, it distinguishes itself by minimizing data collection and eliminating tracking mechanisms. The browser’s privacy policy explicitly states that it does not store personal data, engage in telemetry, or incorporate third-party tracking.
The decision to include Zen Browser in this list stems from its foundational commitment to privacy and user-centric features. Out of the box, with no customizations, it appears to be one of the most privacy-focused browsers that's actively maintained.
Local AI Assistants
When it comes to using AI tools, privacy is a concern on a the minds of most businesses. Most popular AI services today are centralized, cloud-based, and involve sending your prompts, interactions, and sometimes entire documents to remote servers for processing and training. That data can be logged, analyzed, and potentially leaked. This is where Ollama stands out—as a truly local AI assistant that runs entirely on your own device, no external servers involved, no opportunity for data leaks.
Ollama lets you download and run open-source language models directly on your computer, meaning your prompts and responses never leave your machine. There’s no background telemetry, no cloud sync, and no API requests to a remote endpoint every time you ask a question. Large-scale AI companies are incentivized to harvest user data for model training. Ollama offers a fundamentally different model, one that aligns with privacy-first principles and gives users complete control.
For my workflow, I've been using llama3.3 70B, but make sure to check the Ollama site for the latest models and updates becuase this part of the article is likely to spoil like milk. I use this model to help me interpret complex documents, such as legal contracts, or information from emails I receive, where I need to understand the context or meaning of something but I don't feel comfortable or autorized frankly to send that type of information to a remote server at a company that has insentive to train off it.
The performance is impressive too, sure it may not be as great as the smartest models online, but it's still very smart and fast. While it may not match the raw power of the largest cloud-hosted LLMs, for 90% of tasks, it’s more than capable. It fits seamlessly into a tech stack that values user sovereignty, and it closes a privacy gap in a category that has exploded with tools but rarely with privacy safeguards. For anyone serious about privacy, especially if you’re using AI to process internal notes, code, or strategic ideas, running your models locally is the only way to be sure they remain yours. That’s why Ollama earned its place in my privacy-first stack.
Quick Access to These Tools
As a security-conscious individual, I’ve assembled this tool stack to cover the spectrum of my main online activities with privacy in mind. Each component, from ProtonMail to Bitwarden to WebCull, plays a role in fencing off a part of my digital life from data theft. The common thread is end-to-end encryption, only I and my trusted contacts see the contents of communications or files, and service providers operate on a “need to know nothing” basis.
Interestingly, using these tools doesn’t make life harder, in many ways it has made my workflows more efficient and secure. WebCull's organization features expand in many other ways than just privacy. This personal tech stack is always evolving, there are always new tools, updates, and things just change sometimes. As they do, I will update this blog. I've set a reminder to update this blog every two months to review if something has changed. Each time I make the update, I will also update a sharable folder with all the links to make it easy to access them all at once in a folder. I hope this helps you get started with your own privacy-focused tech stack.
Bookmark this to keep these links handy: w/privacytools