The Privacy Cookbook is an open-source field guide to digital privacy and operational security: threat modeling, hardening guides, tool recommendations with their tradeoffs stated, and a case-study collection of real OPSEC failures.
Principles
- Threat models before tools. Advice that doesn't say who it defends against is a shopping list. Every guide here states its assumptions.
- Tradeoffs in writing. No tool is free; the costs are part of the recommendation.
- Claims carry sources. Important assertions cite standards, court records, audits, or reputable research, and we don't fabricate either.
- Sustainable beats maximal. A routine you keep is worth more than a perfect one you abandon.
- No revenue. No ads, no affiliate links, no sponsorships, no paid placements. Nothing here is for sale, which keeps the recommendations boring in the best way.
Relationship to Privacy Guides
This project is openly inspired by the approach of Privacy Guides, criteria-driven recommendations, threat-model thinking, community maintenance. It is independent and unaffiliated: separate people, separate code, separate editorial decisions. If you want a second opinion on anything here, Privacy Guides is a good place to get one, and that's intended as a feature of the ecosystem, not a rivalry.
Contributing
The site is a static site generated from Markdown files in a public repository. Fixes and new articles arrive as pull requests; the repository contains contributor documentation covering everything from adding a page to the editorial style. Corrections are especially welcome, a project like this earns trust by how it handles being wrong.
The pigeon
The site mark is a pigeon with a surveillance camera for a head. Pigeons carried private messages for centuries and nobody thought twice about them; the camera is what modern infrastructure did to the messenger. Keeping the two in one image seemed honest.