The first task a person should do when taking steps to protect their privacy and security is to make a threat model. Defining a threat To make a threat model, we must first define a threat. A common mistake made by people who are just getting into the privacy space is to define the threat as “big-tech companies.” There is a fundamental problem with this definition: Why are we not trusting “big-tech companies,” but then shifting our trust to “small-tech companies”?