Privacy Resources

Understanding Digital Privacy

In the modern digital landscape, privacy has become one of the most contested and important issues facing individuals, organizations, and societies around the world. Every day, billions of people generate enormous quantities of personal data through their online activities — browsing the web, sending messages, making purchases, using social media, and simply carrying smartphones that continuously track their location and behavior. This data is collected, aggregated, analyzed, and monetized by corporations, governments, and data brokers, often without the meaningful informed consent of the individuals whose lives it describes.

The consequences of this pervasive surveillance extend far beyond mere inconvenience or targeted advertising. Mass data collection creates detailed profiles of individuals that can be used for social manipulation, political control, discriminatory pricing, employment screening, insurance assessment, and countless other purposes that the data subjects never intended or authorized. In authoritarian regimes, surveillance data has been used to identify, track, and persecute dissidents, journalists, activists, and members of marginalized communities. Even in democratic societies, the chilling effect of knowing that one's every digital action is potentially monitored can suppress free expression, discourage legitimate research, and undermine the fundamental right to think and communicate privately.

The resources collected on this page represent our curated selection of the most valuable tools, educational materials, and community resources available for anyone who wants to take control of their digital privacy. Whether you are a complete beginner who has never used encryption before, or an experienced privacy advocate looking for advanced techniques, you will find something useful here. We have organized these resources into categories for easy navigation, and we regularly update this page to reflect the latest developments in privacy technology and best practices.

Getting Started with PGP Encryption

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is one of the most important tools in your privacy toolkit, and understanding how to use it is essential for secure communication on Catharsis and beyond. PGP uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography to provide confidentiality, integrity, and authentication for digital communications. The system works on the principle of key pairs — each user generates a public key that can be shared freely and a private key that must be kept secret at all times.

When you want to send an encrypted message to someone, you encrypt it using their public key. The resulting ciphertext can only be decrypted using the corresponding private key, which only the intended recipient possesses. This means that even if the encrypted message is intercepted during transmission or if the servers storing it are compromised, the contents remain completely unreadable to anyone who does not hold the private key. Conversely, when you want to prove that a message was sent by you and has not been tampered with, you can digitally sign it using your private key, and anyone with your public key can verify the signature.

To get started with PGP, we recommend installing GnuPG (GPG), the free and open-source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. GPG is available for all major operating systems and can be used from the command line or through graphical frontends such as Kleopatra (Windows), GPG Suite (macOS), or Seahorse (Linux). After installation, you should generate a new key pair with a minimum key size of 4096 bits for RSA or use the newer Ed25519 elliptic curve algorithm, which provides equivalent security with shorter key lengths and faster operations.

Once your key pair is generated, you should upload your public key to a key server or share it directly with the people you want to communicate with. On Catharsis, you can paste your public key into your profile settings, and it will be automatically used to encrypt all private messages sent to you. We strongly recommend creating a dedicated key pair for use on Catharsis that is not linked to any of your other online identities, maintaining strict compartmentalization between your various digital personas.

Cryptocurrency Privacy Best Practices

Using cryptocurrency does not automatically guarantee financial privacy. While cryptocurrencies eliminate the need for traditional banking intermediaries, the degree of privacy they provide varies significantly depending on the specific cryptocurrency used and how transactions are conducted. Understanding these nuances is crucial for maintaining financial anonymity when using Catharsis or any other platform.

Bitcoin, while pseudonymous, records all transactions on a publicly viewable blockchain. Blockchain analysis companies have developed sophisticated tools that can trace the flow of Bitcoin through multiple addresses, potentially linking transactions to real-world identities through exchange deposits, merchant payments, or other points where Bitcoin interacts with the traditional financial system. To mitigate this risk, Bitcoin users should employ privacy-enhancing techniques such as CoinJoin (which combines multiple users' transactions to obscure the sender-recipient relationship), using new addresses for every transaction, and avoiding the reuse of addresses that have been associated with their identity.

Monero provides far superior financial privacy through its built-in privacy features. Ring signatures mix each transaction with multiple decoy transactions, making it impossible to determine which input is the real one. Stealth addresses generate a one-time address for each transaction, so the recipient's public address never appears on the blockchain. RingCT hides the transaction amounts, preventing anyone from seeing how much money was transferred. These features work together to make Monero transactions completely opaque — the sender, recipient, and amount are all hidden by default, with no possibility of tracing.

Regardless of which cryptocurrency you use, always acquire your coins through methods that do not require identity verification when possible. Peer-to-peer exchanges, Bitcoin ATMs (in jurisdictions where they do not require ID), and mining are all options for obtaining cryptocurrency without creating a link to your real identity. If you must use a centralized exchange that requires KYC (Know Your Customer) verification, transfer your coins through several intermediary wallets and consider using a mixing service before depositing to your Catharsis wallet.

Advanced Operational Security

For users who require the highest level of anonymity, we recommend adopting an advanced operational security (OPSEC) framework that goes beyond basic privacy tools. This includes using air-gapped computers for sensitive cryptographic operations such as PGP key generation and signing, employing hardware security keys for storing private keys, and maintaining strict physical security practices for any devices used to access anonymous services.

Consider using Tails OS booted from a USB drive for all Catharsis-related activities. Tails routes all internet traffic through Tor by default, runs entirely in RAM, and leaves no traces on the host computer when shut down. For an additional layer of security, you can configure Tails to use a persistent encrypted storage volume for saving your PGP keys, wallet files, and bookmarks across sessions while still maintaining the amnesic properties for everything else.

Time zone and language settings can also leak information about your location. Configure your Tor Browser and operating system to use UTC time and English (US) language settings regardless of your actual location. Avoid accessing Catharsis at consistent times that could reveal your local time zone or daily routine. Be aware that writing style analysis (stylometry) can potentially be used to identify authors, so consider varying your writing style in platform communications or using text paraphrasing tools to modify your natural writing patterns.