99 Free Privacy Tools for 2023: Online Security Apps for Nothing

Trackers, malware, spyware, ads, search engines – there is no shortage of software that aims to grab as much of your user data as possible. These free privacy tools can help you prevent that.

User privacy is an important topic. Companies left and right are selling your data to advertisers, making it very likely that your data will fall into the wrong hands at some point. If you want to be proactive to mitigate your risks — without spending a dime — we’ve got 99 free privacy tools that’ll help: VPNs, antivirus, password managers, secure messaging, ad blockers and more. 

Key Takeaways:

• Keeping your data private should always be a priority when you’re online. 
• Most of the apps you use on a daily basis aren’t optimized for privacy, which creates the need for privacy-oriented tools and browser extensions. 
• The best way to ensure security and privacy is to use tools that are built around protecting your user data. 

One thing to note before we get into the tools themselves is that they are not necessarily recommendations, and they are in no particular order. Some will do a better job than others, so try them out before committing. 

• There is no one best tool for privacy — the best way to boost your online privacy is to use a combination of tools.

• The safest browser that’s built around user privacy is Puffin.

• A privacy tool is any piece of software (or hardware) that helps increase your online privacy and keeps your user data private.

ReviewVisit

Bitdefender

Secure Messaging & Email

Not every app keeps your messages private, so you should consider using secure messaging and email apps. 

43. Signal

Signal’s proprietary Signal protocol is open source and very secure, and each message or call is encrypted by default. As far as secure phone calls and messages go, Signal is the app you want to use. 

44. ZMail

ZMail generates fake email addresses, allowing you to do things like test email servers or send emails without compromising your actual email address. Just don’t use it for anything malicious — don’t be that guy (or girl). 

45. Guerrilla Mail

Guerrilla Mail gives you an email address to sign up for online services. It’s great if you would rather not allow every service provider access to your real email. 

46. Voxer

Voxer is a push-to-talk (PTT) app that uses Signal’s proprietary encryption protocol. Although it supports text, photos, videos and location sharing, it’s primarily made for quick and effective voice communication like a walkie talkie.

47. Wickr Me

Wickr Me’s free plan offers end-to-end encrypted communication, with file transfers up to 1GB and up to 30 users. You also get secure screen sharing, which is neat if you use it for collaboration with colleagues. 

48. Pryvate

Pryvate is an app that encrypts messages, video calls and files. It can only be decrypted from the recipient’s device, and the app keeps no communication records. 

49. Dust

Dust is an encrypted messaging app that deletes all your messages, either after you read them or after 24 hours. If you want, you can even delete them off the recipient’s phone. 

50. Wire

Wire’s free version works for up to five users and has a zero-trust approach, which requires extensive authentication to make sure nobody unauthorized has access. It’s perfect for collaborating with a small team.

51. Mailvelope

Mailvelope is a browser extension that encrypts your emails with Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption. PGP combines symmetric encryption and public-key encryption, so messages can only be decrypted on the recipient’s device, even if you’ve never exchanged messages with them before. 

52. GnuPG

GnuPG is an alternative to Mailvelope that also uses PGP encryption. It’s compatible with more operating systems than Mailvelope, but is slightly more difficult to configure and use. 

53. Element

Element uses the Matrix protocol to provide end-to-end encryption for all your communication. Its forte is that you can import chats from WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram into its app, making communication a lot more convenient if you use more than one app. 

54. Bridgefy

Bridgefy comes with a twist — it only works offline. It’s a messaging app you use via Bluetooth, making it ideal for secure communication whenever you don’t have access to conventional, online messaging apps. 

55. Telegram

Telegram’s easy-to-use app lets you enable end-to-end encryption, though we wish it was enabled by default. Unfortunately, the app collects lots of metadata, such as your IP address and device, which doesn’t bode well for privacy. 

56. Viber

Viber is a multimedia communications app that uses end-to-end encryption, with a unique encryption key for each message. This makes it a great choice for secure communication.

57. Silence

Silence is a secure messaging app that replaces your default text messaging app. Each message is encrypted locally, and there’s no need for servers or an internet connection. It’s so secure it doesn’t even let you take a screenshot of the app. Unfortunately, it’s only available for Android. 

58. iMessage

iMessage is Apple’s built-in multimedia messaging app, only available on its own operating systems. If you’re in the ecosystem though, it’s perfect for secure communication. 

Tracker & Ad Blockers

Ads and trackers can ruin your browsing experience and grab data you’d rather keep to yourself. Ad and tracker blockers help provide an ad, and tracker-free browsing experience. 

59. uBlock Origin

uBlock Origin is the best ad blocking browser extension, period. It works great, it’s incredibly configurable and it uses very few system resources. 

60. AdBlock

AdBlock is a simple, straightforward extension that works great. The UI is very easy to work with, and you can pause the extension for specific websites. AdBlock also does a great job with pop-ups and trackers, as well as floating videos. 

61. Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus has a remarkably simple UI and is very effective at blocking ads and pop-ups. You can see how many ads the browser extension has blocked so far, which gives you an analytical perspective on ads in your internet traffic. 

62. AdBlocker Ultimate

AdBlocker Ultimate boasts compatibility with almost any browser out there, and it also has a desktop app for Windows users. The extension is open source, so you can download the source code and tinker if you’d like. 

63. AdGuard AdBlocker

AdGuard’s free AdBlocker browser extension blocks almost all ads. It also works admirably to get around scripts that ask you to disable your ad blocker to access a website. AdGuard has a VPN service, which you can read more about in our AdGuard VPN review.

64. 1Blocker

1Blocker is made for Safari users and is available for free on the app store. It blocks ads, trackers, miners and widgets, and its parental controls can block explicit comments and adult websites.  

65. Privacy Badger

Privacy Badger is an artificial intelligence–based extension that looks for common behaviors in trackers. It can detect trackers even on websites that aren’t on any of the popular filter lists, making it very effective. 

66. Ghostery

Ghostery’s free plan lets you view and block trackers at four configurable levels. However, we’d suggest looking into the paid plan, which gives you detailed insights into the trackers you come across — which is excellent if you want to know exactly what they do. 

67. AdAway

AdAway is an Android-only app that blocks ads using a hosts file, which means it will block ads on a system level, not just in a specific browser. It’s fully open source, but only available via F-Droid, an alternative to the Play store.

68. Adblocker for YouTube

Adblocker for YouTube does only two things: it blocks ads on YouTube, and allows you to play videos in floating mode. It lacks any kind of configurability, but if you only want to block YouTube ads, it’s an excellent choice. 

69. uBlocker

uBlocker is a simple yet effective ad blocker. It works not just against ads, but also malware and viruses. There is very little configurability, though. 

Secure Search Engines

Secure search engines aim to provide useful results without logging your searches or gathering personal identifying information. 

70. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused alternative to Google. The search engine doesn’t track your search queries, so you can use it without fearing for your privacy. Read more about it in our DuckDuckGo article. We also have a guide on how to use the DuckDuckGo email protection feature.

71. Gibiru

Gibiru makes use of the Google search results algorithm, but also crawls lesser-known websites. This allows it to keep your search history private while giving you results that Google would usually skip. 

72. Oscobo

Oscobo is a search engine that’s vocally opposed to Google’s data mining practices. Instead of collecting your personal data, Oscobo doesn’t log anything. It also keeps your data encrypted and never allows any third-party tools or scripts to track your activity. 

73. Qwant

Quant is a modern and highly configurable alternative to most search engines. It gets you plenty of filters, various themes and shows you trending news. Because it’s based in Europe, Quant gives its users protection according to the rather strict European privacy laws, and it also doesn’t collect any user data. 

74. Disconnect Search

Disconnect Search is a private search engine that acts as a middleman between you and any of the search engines you’d like to use. It gives you results from your chosen search engine, but before fetching the results, it strips away any identifiable information. 

75. Startpage

Startpage uses Google as its search engine of choice. However, before sending any request, it removes any identifiable information so the search engine can’t track you. 

76. Swisscows

Rather than track you, Swisscows uses semantic data recognition to give you faster and more tailored answers to your queries. This yields personalized results without the tracking. 

77. Mojeek

Mojeek is a crawler-based private search engine that creates its own index of web pages. This allows it to get you relevant search results without the requesting or tracking of your private data. 

78. MetaGer

MetaGer is a private search engine built upon 24 small-scale web crawlers that the provider has complete control over. It has transparent algorithms that anyone can look into. 

Secure Web Browsers

Web browsers often allow advertising companies to collect user data. Secure web browsers prevent this from happening. 

79. Brave

Brave is a browser that comes with built-in ad blocking and cross-website tracker blocking functionality. It also blocks browser fingerprinting. You can find out more about it in our Brave review.

80. Tor Browser

The Tor Browser is a gateway for accessing the Tor network. Tor is a network of proxies that lets you access websites in the deep web, while keeping you safe anywhere you go. The proxies are maintained by volunteers, though, so their actual security can be hit or miss. Learn more in our Tor review. 

81. Firefox Focus

Firefox Focus is Mozilla’s mobile-only, Firefox-based browser that focuses on privacy. It’s a stand-alone browser that has more privacy and security settings enabled by default than the regular Firefox browser. It’s also always in private browsing mode, and you can lock the app itself behind a passcode. 

82. Orbot

Orbot encrypts your traffic and bounces it off several proxy servers before it gets to its destination. Unfortunately, proxies are maintained by volunteers, which makes the actual security a bit questionable. 

83. Puffin

Puffin took the top spot in our most secure browser list, and its mobile version is free. As we discussed in our Puffin review, the browser loads websites on Puffin’s own servers rather than on the client side, which means that malicious online content can’t harm your device that easily.  

84. Vivaldi

Vivaldi is an extremely configurable browser that’s loaded with so many features that it makes extensions practically unnecessary. As seen in our Vivaldi review, its best features are the security patches that are issued every one to two weeks, keeping the browser up to date on security. 

85. Epic

Epic Privacy Browser makes use of the Chromium source code, but with a twist — it’s like using Google Chrome in permanent incognito mode. It has a built-in ad blocker, tracker and fingerprinting blocker, and exiting the browser will delete all browser data. 

86. Waterfox

Waterfox is an open-source Firefox offshoot which supports extensions for Firefox, Chrome and Opera. It’s more privacy-focused than Firefox and removes many Firefox features that collect data and decrease privacy. 

87. UnGoogled Chromium

UnGoogled Chromium is an open-source browser based on Chromium, without Google web services. This makes it an excellent privacy-focused web browser for people who don’t want to entrust Google with their personal information.

88. Bromite

Bromite is another Chromium derivative that’s made to be as user-friendly as possible. It comes with several privacy enhancements and provides a clean, clutter-free browsing experience. 

89. Iridium Browser

Iridium is a Chromium-based browser that’s backed by the Open Source Business Alliance. It focuses on security and aims to provide a fast, simple and privacy-focused experience. 

Microsoft’s Windows operating system isn’t particularly privacy-focused, but with these free tools, you can prevent it from mishandling your user data. 

90. W10Privacy

W10Privacy is like Windows 10’s control panel on steroids. It’s a security tool that gives you total control of all privacy settings within your operating system. 

91. O&O ShutUp10++

O&O ShutUp10++ is an executable that lets you control where your data goes when you’re using Windows 10 and Windows 11. You can control any privacy-oriented setting, giving you complete control over your data. 

92. TinyWall

TinyWall is a lightweight, easy-to-use firewall. Unlike Windows’ built-in solution, this one is highly configurable and gives you more control over all settings. It includes things like support for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, boot-time filtering and is very easy to configure. 

93. WPD

WPD is a minimalist dashboard that lets you enable and disable various settings on Windows 10. It’s organized into two main categories, each of which has a slew of toggles for you to play with. 

94. Privacy Repairer

Privacy Repairer bundles almost 60 options that give you complete control over Windows 10’s privacy settings. It’s a breeze to use and offers presets to make things even easier. 

95. DoNotSpy10

DoNotSpy10 is an anti-spy tool for Windows 10 that prevents your operating system from collecting and sharing data. You can manage what you do and don’t want to share, putting privacy back into your hands. 

These tools don’t really fall under any of the aforementioned categories, but they’re still worth mentioning.

96. HTTPS Everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere is an extension that forces websites to load a secure version with an SSL certificate installed. This makes sure you’re using an encrypted connection when loading any website. 

97. Disconnect

Disconnect is an all-in-one solution that blocks various requests for data. It’s a great way to learn what websites do behind the scenes and get control over your browsing. The Privacy and Privacy DNS plans are free.

98. GlassWire

GlassWire is a free firewall and network monitoring tool. It’s a neat way of monitoring all incoming and outgoing connections and getting alerts if something suspicious happens. 

99. Tails

Tails is a complete operating system that you can start on almost any computer from a USB drive. It’s a live operating system, which means it’ll completely wipe itself once you shut it down. 

Final Thoughts

Your data privacy should always be a priority. The 99 privacy tools above will help you keep your user data to yourself — all for free. As a bonus, we have compiled a list of the best data privacy management tools to help you automate and expedite data removal.

Keep in mind that besides using these tools, you have to adhere to a set of best practices to enhance your digital privacy, as you can read in the online privacy guide.

What are your favorite free privacy tools? Do you use one or two, or do you have a whole collection of tools that work well with each other? Let us know in the comments, and thank you for reading.

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