We live an increasingly large portion of our lives online. This buys us speed and ease of communication that allow connections to be maintained with people across oceans when in the past such things were impractical. However, it also means that larger and larger amounts of personal information leak into electronic records (ISP records, phone company records, etc). This guide from the Electronic Frontier Foundation goes into some detail on how much of that information-leakage is possible to mitigate, with a focus on avoiding government snooping.