Guides & How-tos · Worked examples · Real numbers

Privacy & Data guides

Step-by-step how-tos, head-to-head comparisons and honest roundups — every guide worked through with current figures, then backed by a RECATOOLS calculator or AI-directory entry so you can act on it.

302 guides published 17 topic areas Latest guide Sep 2026

All 302 AI & ML 60 Developer Tools 48 Finance 33 Chinese Culture 29 Cybersecurity 26 Privacy & Data 10

A monthly wall calendar lying on business charts with one date circled in red and the word deadline written across it

Privacy & Data 7 min

Singapore's 3 days and Malaysia's 72 hours are not the same deadline

Both look like the same breach-notification window, but the clocks start at different events. Singapore's three days beg...

Priya Nair

Pub. 4 Sep

A closed burgundy passport lying on a pale cloth surface

Privacy & Data 6 min

What an ID number's check digit actually proves

The last character of most identity numbers is computed from the ones before it, using a published formula anyone can ap...

Priya Nair

Pub. 31 Aug

A two-gang light switch on a plain wall in raking light, one rocker pressed up and the other down, with a hard diagonal shadow across the lower half of the frame.

Privacy & Data 5 min

How to Stop ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok Training on Your Chats (2026)

Four switches with almost the same name, doing four different things. Three are on by default. One also sets your retent...

Priya Nair

Pub. 29 Aug

A desktop monitor on a home desk showing a photograph of a cat open in image-editing software, toolbars and a histogram panel either side of it.

Privacy & Data 5 min

Which Image Operations Strip Metadata

A source image with six identifying tags and GPS coordinates, put through eight operations. Pillow drops everything unle...

Priya Nair

Pub. 25 Aug

A close-up of a row of pale locker doors, each fitted with its own separate lock

Privacy & Data 6 min

How to Stop an Agent Returning Documents the User Should Not See

A vector search scoped three ways, and measured each time. Unfiltered, four in five results belonged to another team; fi...

Priya Nair

Pub. 22 Aug

A person's hands resting on a laptop keyboard, photographed from the side in soft daylight.

Privacy & Data 8 min

First-Party, Third-Party: What the Cookie Labels Hide

Six public homepages, a fresh browser profile each, no banner answered: from 0 cookies to 54. But the count is the wrong...

Priya Nair

Pub. 11 Aug

An open laptop on a wooden desk with a browser window on screen.

Privacy & Data 6 min

What Can a Browser Extension See? We Read the Manifests

The permission dialogue tells you exactly what an extension may do, in a vocabulary that means little until you have see...

Priya Nair

Pub. 11 Aug

A person seen from behind working at a desk of screens in a darkened room.

Privacy & Data 6 min

What Does Incognito Mode Actually Do? Less Than the Name Suggests

A private window destroys a storage container when you close it — five things go with it, all of them data your own devi...

Priya Nair

Pub. 11 Aug

Rows of turquoise fibre-optic cables plugged into a patch panel in a data centre, photographed close up.

Privacy & Data 7 min

What Is My IP Address, and What Does It Actually Reveal?

It identifies a connection, not a person. It gives away your country reliably, your network operator exactly, and — the...

Priya Nair

Pub. 10 Aug

A hand resting on a stack of manila document folders and newspaper clippings on a desk, as if about to hand them over.

Privacy & Data 8 min

How to Redact a PDF So the Text Is Actually Gone

A black rectangle removes nothing, and the check most people run afterwards returns nothing on a file that is leaking ba...

Priya Nair

Pub. 9 Aug