Guides
Practical, independent guides to staying safe online — account security, privacy rights, harassment, and digital legacy. These are written to be useful on their own terms, whether or not you ever use Seldeo. No sign-up, no paywall, and no product pitch.
Latest
The three most recently published guides.
Presence signals: what online status, last seen, and typing indicators give away
A green dot looks like a courtesy. Left on for a year it is a log of when you sleep, when you work, and who you answer first. What presence signals actually broadcast, and how to decide what to leave on.
Deleting an online account properly
Closing an account is the single most effective privacy action available to you — and the easiest one to get wrong. What to export first, what deletion actually removes, the safeguards a decent deletion flow should have, and what to do if the account was deleted without your consent.
Talking to your family about digital legacy
The planning is the easy part. Having the conversation is what people avoid — so here is how to raise it without it becoming morbid, what to actually agree on, and where to write it down.
Account security
Passwords, passkeys, two-factor methods, and what to do when a device or account is compromised.
Passkeys explained: how passwordless sign-in actually works
Passkeys replace passwords with a key pair held by your device. Here is what that means in practice, why phishing stops working against them, and the honest trade-offs nobody mentions in the marketing.
Choosing a two-factor method: SMS, apps, and hardware keys compared
Not all second factors are equal. SMS codes stop opportunistic attacks but fail against the ones aimed at you specifically. A practical comparison, and what to use for which account.
Securing your email account: the one that unlocks everything else
Your inbox is the master key to nearly every other account you own. Why attackers go for it first, the settings that actually make it hard to take, and the quiet forms of persistence people forget to check.
Your phone is lost or stolen: what to do, in order
The first thirty minutes matter most. A step-by-step response for a lost or stolen phone, why the passcode matters more than the fingerprint, and the preparation that turns a crisis into an inconvenience.
Privacy & your data
What platforms collect, the rights you have over it, and the practical steps to exercise them.
Presence signals: what online status, last seen, and typing indicators give away
A green dot looks like a courtesy. Left on for a year it is a log of when you sleep, when you work, and who you answer first. What presence signals actually broadcast, and how to decide what to leave on.
Deleting an online account properly
Closing an account is the single most effective privacy action available to you — and the easiest one to get wrong. What to export first, what deletion actually removes, the safeguards a decent deletion flow should have, and what to do if the account was deleted without your consent.
How to read a privacy policy in ten minutes
Nobody reads privacy policies, and the documents are written knowing it. Here is how to extract the five things that actually matter, and the specific phrases that should slow you down.
How to exercise your data rights: a practical guide to GDPR, CCPA and the rest
You have a legal right to see, correct, export, and delete the data companies hold about you. Most people never use it. Here is what the rights actually are, how to make a request that cannot be ignored, and what to do when one is.
End-to-end encryption: what it protects and what it does not
E2EE is the strongest privacy guarantee in consumer messaging and it is routinely oversold. What the guarantee covers, the four things it never covers, and how to tell a real implementation from a marketing badge.
An annual privacy audit for your online accounts
An hour a year, worked through in order: dormant accounts, connected apps, ad profiles, location history, and the settings that quietly reset themselves after product updates.
Safety & harassment
Recognising abuse and scams, documenting what happened, and getting platforms to act.
When your personal information is posted online
Doxxing in practical terms: what to do in the first hour, how to get an address or phone number removed from platforms and search results, and how to reduce the exposure that made it possible.
Spotting fake and impersonation accounts
How to tell a cloned profile from the real person, what impersonators are usually after, and the steps that actually get a fake account removed — including when the person being impersonated is you.
Recognising social engineering: how account takeovers actually happen
Almost no one is hacked through clever code. They are talked into it. The recurring patterns behind account takeover scams, why intelligence is no defence, and the one habit that reliably works.
Responding to online harassment: documentation, reporting, and protecting yourself
What to do in the first hour, how to build evidence that platforms and police will actually act on, and how to reduce your exposure without disappearing from the internet.
How content moderation actually works
Why your report was rejected, what happens between pressing the button and a decision, why appeals succeed more often than people expect, and what the new transparency rules entitle you to.
Digital legacy
Planning for your own accounts, and handling the accounts of someone who has died.
Talking to your family about digital legacy
The planning is the easy part. Having the conversation is what people avoid — so here is how to raise it without it becoming morbid, what to actually agree on, and where to write it down.
Digital legacy: what happens to your online accounts when you die
Email, photos, cloud storage, and social profiles do not pass to your family automatically — and in most cases a password in a will does not help. Here is how account succession actually works, and the four steps that make the difference.
Memorializing a loved one's accounts: a practical walkthrough
What documents you need, which platforms offer what, the order to do things in, and the irreversible mistakes to avoid when handling the accounts of someone who has died.
Grief on social media: etiquette, boundaries, and the notifications nobody warns you about
How to announce a death, what to do about the reminders that arrive months later, how to support someone grieving online without making it worse, and when stepping back is the right call.
Families & young people
Age rules, parental controls, and having useful conversations about life online.
Screen time and digital wellbeing: what the evidence actually supports
Total screen time is a weak measure of harm. What matters more is what the time is spent doing, when it happens, and what it displaces — plus the changes that genuinely help.
A parent's guide to teenagers and social media
Age rules, what parental controls can and cannot do, the risks that actually matter versus the ones that get headlines, and how to have conversations that keep a teenager talking to you.
Helping an older relative stay safe online
The scams that specifically target older adults, the setup changes that prevent most of them, and how to help without taking away independence or creating a dependency on you.