Start with what matters
Privacy is easier to manage when you begin with concrete information: your email account, personal messages, files, and the devices you use. Decide what you want to keep private and who should have access.
A small set of habits you can maintain is more useful than a collection of settings you do not understand.
Make important accounts harder to lose
Use a unique password for each important account. A password manager can help you create and keep them. Enable multifactor authentication where it is supported, and store recovery codes somewhere you can reach if your phone is lost.
Take a moment to check the sender and website before responding to an urgent login or payment request. Urgency is not evidence that a request is genuine.
Know what private browsing does
Private browsing reduces the browsing history and site data retained by that browser session. It does not make you anonymous to websites, your network provider, or a device administrator.
Review browser extensions and app permissions. Remove access that you no longer need. Prefer a few understood tools over many overlapping ones.
Check files and keep recoverable copies
Back up files you cannot replace and occasionally check that you can restore them. A hash can help compare a downloaded file with an expected checksum, provided the expected value comes from a trusted source.
The SHA-256 calculator reads a file locally. You can compare its fingerprint without uploading the file to a conversion service.