Build your threat model

You cannot harden against everything, so you decide what you protect and who from, then put your effort there. The model here is built for the person who crosses borders and operates where the network, the carrier, and the checkpoint are not friendly. When you answer the five questions, the tool returns a plan that ranks each step by how much it closes your threats and shows its cost and its limit.

Privacy Guides frames threat modeling as five questions: what you protect, from whom, how likely it is, how bad it would be, and how much effort you will spend. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity adds the honest ceiling: no set of measures defeats a highly resourceful, motivated global adversary. These measures close everything below that ceiling, so you name the real threats in your life, not the worst case.