The Privacy Diet. A Practical Guide to Reclaiming Your Privacy Online - James Patrick

Your data isn’t being stolen. It’s being sold - and you agreed to it.Every search, every app, every "Allow" you tapped without reading - it all adds up to a digital portrait of you, built and sold by companies you’ve never heard of. The Privacy Diet is the practical, no-nonsense guide to taking that control back, one deliberate change at a time.Written by an IT professional who has spent years managing infrastructure and de-Googling his own life, this isn’t another "just use a VPN" listicle - and it isn’t a paranoid deep-dive that assumes you want to disappear off the grid. It’s a realistic, sustainable approach: small habit changes that compound over time, the same way a good diet works.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

Your Phone - Lock down location, microphone, and camera permissions. Understand the real difference between iPhone and Android privacy. Flash a de-Googled custom ROM (GrapheneOS) if you want to go all the way.

Your Internet Use - Choose a browser and search engine that don’t watch you. Understand browser fingerprinting and how to fight it. Switch to encrypted messaging and email. Learn what a VPN actually does - and what it doesn’t.

Your Home Network - Harden your router in under an hour. Set up encrypted DNS. Block ads and trackers network-wide with Pi-hole. Segment your IoT devices so your smart TV can’t be a backdoor into your laptop.

Own Your Stack - Self-host your own password manager, file storage, and photo backup - so your data lives on your hardware, not someone else’s.Every chapter is split into beginner and advanced sections, so whether you want fifteen-minute quick wins this weekend or a full self-hosted homelab, you can go exactly as deep as you want.This is not about becoming invisible. It’s about no longer being the easiest target in the room.