Below are a few steps that you can take to increase your privacy and security. I’ve tried to categorize them by difficulty.

Painless
Do these in the next 5 minutes!

-Switch your search engine to a private one (Startpage, Ixquix, DuckDuckGo)

-Download the Signal app from the Play store or itunes (or whatever iphone users use) to replace your texting app. (encrypted internet based texting, OR regular texting over cell networks without encryption). This also allows encrypted VOIP phone calls.

 

Slightly painful

-Start using Firefox as your browser

-Set it up with some good Extensions

-Switch to a privacy focused email provider (this seems like it would be super painful, but it really isn’t that bad, I promise.)

-Encrypt your Android phone

 

Slightly Inconvenient

-Use a Password Manager! This does take a bit of work, but especially if you use Lastpass, it can be pretty painless. Once it’s set up, it’s actually easier.

-Create a strong passphrase, and set things to log out automatically

-Use two factor authentication

-Encrypt your Computer with Bitlocker, File Vault or Veracrypt

 

Difficult 
-Switch to a Linux OS on your computer

-switch to an open source OS on your android phone (such as CopperheadOS).

Note that iphones are inherently more secure than android phones as reviewed on                  Operational Security

-Create an amazon acct under a fictitious name that is funded only by gift cards.

-Make all online purchases with prepaid gift cards that are not linked to you

-Use Abine’s Blur to anonymize your credit card transactions