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Most people have the intuition not to walk into a store when it’s being robbed. You know to seek shelter when a lightning storm is about to hit. You don’t wander through a sketchy neighborhood waving a wad of cash around yelling, “I’m unarmed and I have no idea how to defend myself!”

We’ve picked up basic situational awareness over a lifetime of experience. Nobody had to teach you most of it. The consequences were just obvious enough that the behavior stuck.

In the digital world, it unfortunately doesn’t always work that way.

It’s not so obvious what’s a threat. That email from an old friend you haven’t heard from in years - is it actually them, or is it bait? That WiFi network at the airport or hotel with the friendly name - is it a legitimate network, or is it someone sitting in a corner running a honeypot? The app that you gave access to your microphone to function as a flashlight - wait... what? why does it need that?

The operating system that claims to care about your privacy while selling all your usage information to the highest bidder all day every day... I think you get the point.

The threats are real. They’re just invisible. And most people have no frame of reference for what “safe” even looks like in the digital domain because they don’t understand how most of it works in the first place, which makes it nearly impossible to recognize when something is off.

So this week, instead of another rant, I want to give you something practical. A few quick wins. Things you can do today, that actually move the needle.

Start with what’s already in your pocket.

Go through every app on your phone. If you haven’t touched it in two months, delete it. Don’t think about it too hard. Every app you remove is one less attack surface, one less company with a data pipeline into your life. This applies whether you’re on an iPhone, a stock Android, or a Ghost Phone. No exceptions.

Now go into your settings and pull up your app permissions. Look at the apps you have left on the device see which have access to your microphone, your camera, your location, your contacts. You will be surprised and probably annoyed at what you find.

Revoke what doesn’t make sense. A simple calculator app or game does not need your location. That’s called surveillance with a UX layer on top of it, and you should likely just ditch the app altogether.

Simpler is smarter. This one exercise alone takes maybe twenty minutes and immediately reduces your exposure.

Your browser is not neutral.

Chrome is Google’s data collection tool. Safari is marginally better, but it’s still Apple’s walled garden data collection tool. If you’re using either as your daily driver with the default search engine intact, you are being profiled every single time you type a search query and visit a website.

Switch to Brave. It’s free, it’s fast, and it blocks the tracking infrastructure by default. Set Brave Search as your default browser and search engine. It’s not perfect, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction and it costs you nothing but a few minutes.

The WiFi thing is simple. Just stop.

Coffee shop WiFi. Hotel WiFi. Airport WiFi. Every one of those networks is a place where someone with basic tools and bad intentions can see exactly what you’re doing.

The simplest fix most people overlook is using your phone as a hotspot instead.

Most of you are already on unlimited plans. You’re paying for that data either way. Using your own connection means you’re not handing a stranger - or a honeypot someone set up in the corner - a front-row seat to your traffic.

Now, about VPNs. We hear from customers constantly who either swear their VPN makes them completely safe online - without being able to tell us what a VPN actually does - or they’re frustrated because half the websites they visit are blocking them or forcing endless re-authentication loops and they think something is wrong with their browser or their device. It’s usually neither. It’s the VPN. And tweaking VPN settings is not a beginner activity.

Here’s the simpler path: if you’ve already switched to Brave, you already have access to a Tor window. Open Brave, open a new private window with Tor, and you get a meaningful layer of anonymity without a separate app, a monthly subscription, or a settings menu to get lost in. It’s not perfect for every use case, but for general browsing on a network you don’t control, it handles much of what a VPN is supposed to handle - and you literally don’t have to do anything except open a tab.

Again, simpler is smarter. An extra tool you don’t understand is not a security upgrade but just another thing that can go wrong.

DO NOT CLICK. Always Verify.

If an email, a text message, or a social media post has a sense of urgency and a link, slow down. That’s the simple formula.

Urgency plus a link = assume it’s a scam until proven otherwise.

Call the person directly. Go directly to the website by typing the address yourself. Do not click the link to verify the link. This one simple discipline eliminates the majority of phishing attacks. It’s not complicated. It just requires you to pause for thirty seconds before you click or respond.

The list of ways people are actively trying to scam you right now is longer than most people realize and gets longer by the day. Fake package delivery texts, spoofed calls from numbers you recognize, bank alerts, crypto account warnings, all of it engineered to trigger an emotional response fast enough that you act before you think.

I wrote a full breakdown of what this looks like and how to build the habit of catching it at mark37.com/discernment-your-digital-safety-depends-on-it. Worth the ten minutes if this is something you or someone in your family has struggled with.

If you want the full roadmap and structured, stage-by-stage walk through that takes you from auditing your current digital footprint all the way through hardware and network-level changes - you can find it at mark37.com/start-here. We’ve had hundreds of people work through it. Print it out. Check the boxes. Make it real.

In summary, here’s what you do right now:

1.Delete every app you haven’t used in two months. Then check what permissions remain.

2.Download Brave and set it as your default browser with Brave Search as your default engine.

3.Turn on your hotspot the next time you’re in a coffee shop, airport, or hotel. Stop using their WiFi.

4.Before you click any link today that came with urgency attached to it, pause. Verify first.

Moving forward, every week, alongside whatever I’m writing (or ranting) about, I’m going to drop one “Quick Win” you can implement that week. Nothing complicated. Something that takes minutes, not weeks or months, and actually matters.

My goal is that over time, if you read this newsletter consistently, you’ll pick up enough practical knowledge that you stop being an easy target.

Blessings,

Sean Patrick Tario