Scroll to the bottom for more updates. If you know of another list or software, please let us know either in the comments or by email, and we’ll update. Thanks to all who care enough about privacy and freedom to keep contributing to this list…and a special thank you to the developers and Open Source gurus who keep making it possible for us to keep our freedoms on the internet.

We get it, Joe Citizen. You want your privacy. You want to be able to talk on the internet without everyone and their mother at the InsertAlphabetAgencyHere looking at it. You’re mad about the NSA snooping. You aren’t advocating a violent overthrow of the government. You’re not running a domestic terrorism group (well, there are those new DHS criteria…). You’re not even sending around emails about what a dismal failure President Obama’s administration is (THIS hour, anyway). You just want to be able to chat with friends, conduct your financial business, and argue with your spouse without Big Daddy Gummint all up in your biz. Believe it or not, that’s your right. Harry “Who Cares” Reid may blow it off and say the government’s been “doing that stuff for years,” but we’ve got a news flash for Harry: just because you’ve been doing it a while doesn’t make it any more okay. Ask Ted Bundy…oh, wait.

Victory Girls gets it—partly because we value our privacy too. So, because we are all about free speech here—and private speech, too, now that I think about it—here’s a list of ways you can circumvent the government privacy leeches. Granted, this list isn’t all-inclusive, and let’s face it, I’m not an uber-geek. I do, however, read a lot of uber-geek stuff, and so I’m pretty confident with the list I’m about to show you. Keep in mind that you will need to change some of your habits if you decide you really want to keep your personal stuff private. Most people are too lazy…but if you’re not, here’s the list from the guys over at Wired, as well as a few other nooks and crannies I find things in:

– For internet browsing, use Tor. It comes with a full bundle that you can use on any kind of Windows from XP to 8, Mac, or Linux if that’s your flavor. I won’t bore my political readers with the long explanation of why Tor keeps your internet browsing private, but if you want to read all about it you can check out the Wikipedia entry, or just go to the website.

– For email, use Hushmail. It’s free, it’s secure, and if you’re done using that email, no worries. You can either delete it, or stop signing into it. It’ll be gone in 2 weeks, along with all those fan emails you sent to Justin Bieber. See? You do want privacy.

—Update: A reader voiced some concerns about Hushmail and offered the following alternatives for email:

http://www.keptprivate.com/
http://securenym.net/
https://countermail.com/
http://www.safe-mail.net/

If you’re already using the Tor Browser Bundle, check out TorBox or MailTor.  (See Nekro’s Pastebin for the Tor hidden addresses to that and other services.)

Another reader offers:
https://burnnote.com/ – allows you to send emails that self destruct in a set timeframe and don’t allow screenshots.

– For phone service, use Silent Circle. Their Silent Suite has 3G, 4G, and WiFi encrypted mobile video & voice, plus email, plus browsing, plus texts. It’s $49/month but worth it if you’re willing to pay it.

– Seecrypt also offers encrypted voice service and texting. World Net Daily explains how it works.

– If you really don’t want to use a paid service, you could always buy a burner phone (or ten).

– If you’re using instant messenger services, by the way, your stuff is wide open. Use OTR (off the record) messaging, found here. Use Wickr. (One important note: Gmail’s “off the record” setting does NOT mean it’s not being logged…it’s just not retrievable by the user. The data miners can find it just fine.)

Obviously, we aren’t saying it’s okay to hide any illegal and/or nefarious activities. If you’re using this article for that, then I hope you do get busted. That being said, the average citizen simply wants to be able to have a conversation without worrying about how many other people have seen it, and whether that conversation is being used against them somehow. We have the right to free and unfettered speech. We have the right to privacy, and quite frankly, it’s a load of BS that a blog like Victory Girls even has to post a list of ways that law-abiding, regular citizens can keep their overreaching government’s nasty little hands off our private communications, yet here we are.

If you’re just a regular person who wants some freakin’ privacy, check out the links above, and hopefully you find a solution that works for you. Feel free to suggest other tools in the comments; after I’ve checked them out to make sure you’re not trying to send my readers to an Asian porn site for circus midgets, I’ll be glad to post them with credit to you.

UPDATE: More sources for privacy are rolling in:

TrueCrypt: Free disk encryption, or file/folder encryption.  HIGHLY recommend.

PrivateInternetAccess: VPN access for secure internet.

Replicant: For Android devices.

Buddycloud, Diaspora, Friendica or Movim: Instead of Facebook.

Change your OS to OpenBSD Linux.

MediaGoblin: Instead of YouTube.

Vanilla Visa or Simon card instead of Paypal or credit cards.

Red Phone, Jitsi, Ostel, GNU Telephony, Empathy or Ekiga: Instead of Skype, which now has Microsoft eavesdropping.

For even more options, check out this article at Greycoder.com that will let you ask the question “What Type of Privacy Are You Interested In?”

Safe Shepherd helps remove all of your data from sites like Zabasearch and Zillow.

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