Anonymity & OPSEC: Tor, VPNs and Privacy Discipline

About this course

This course teaches privacy as a discipline rather than a single tool. You start by building a threat model: what you protect, who your adversary is and what they can do. Then you learn how Tor routes traffic through guard, middle and exit relays, what each relay can and cannot see, and how onion services work. You compare the trust model of a commercial VPN with Tor's, and see how Tails forgets everything at shutdown while Whonix isolates your workstation behind a Tor gateway. Further lessons cover browser fingerprinting, stripping EXIF and document metadata with exiftool and mat2, end-to-end encryption and forward secrecy in Signal and PGP, and the compartmentalisation habits that prevent identity crossover. Quizzes, challenges and a final exam lead to a certificate. For privacy, journalism and authorized research only.