How the SPA Score Works
The SPA Score is a Techlore-developed methodology for measuring the alignment between your privacy and security situation and your actual habits. Here's what it measures and what your score means.
Six dimensions
The quiz assesses your habits across six areas of digital life. Together they cover the surface area of everyday privacy and security practices.
Five archetypes
The first half of the quiz ("About You") infers your archetype: a profile of your situation and the privacy and security threats most relevant to you. Your archetype determines what a well-aligned setup looks like for you specifically.
Real life doesn't fit neatly into one category, so your result can include up to three archetypes — a primary plus one or two secondaries. Four of the archetypes (Everyday User, Working Professional, Public Figure, High-Risk Activist) describe threat models — who or what you're protecting against. If your answers fall between two of these, your score is calculated against a weighted blend of the two so the bar reflects your actual situation.
Family Guardian works differently: it describes protective responsibility (who you're protecting) rather than a threat model, so it always pairs with one of the others rather than standing alone. When Family Guardian attaches, it can only add to your standards, never lower them — so an activist with kids is still held to an activist's bar, plus the family-protection considerations on top.
How the quiz works
The quiz is split into two phases:
- Phase A: About You: questions about your work, life, threats, and experience level. These infer your archetype and set the standard your habits will be scored against.
- Phase B: Your Habits: tool and practice questions across all six dimensions. Once Phase B begins, a skip to results shortcut appears at the top. While it's not recommended, you can calculate your score at any point without completing every question.
The results page opens with a Start Here card. This is one focused recommendation for your biggest gap, tailored to your specific archetype that links to the respective tool and/or wiki entry to help you implement the advice. Below that, the full Dimension Breakdown shows how each area compares to your ideal, followed by a list of other gaps with direct links to relevant resources.
The SPA Score scale
The SPA Score is a single number that measures how your current habits compare to what someone in your situation ideally needs. It's designed around a center point of 100.
- 100 means your habits exactly match your situation's ideal.
- Below 100 means there are gaps, you're under-protected for your situation.
- Above 100 means your setup exceeds what your situation strictly requires.
There is no upper cap. A security-focused user who runs high-risk tooling despite having a lower-risk situation will score well above 100. We understand some people will opt for this, as long as it's an intentional choice we think it's great.
Well-aligned users typically score in the 90–97 range, not exactly 100. This is intentionally done. Our methodology is calibrated slightly above a "realistic well-aligned" baseline to provide something to work toward as we think SPA is a lifelong journey.
Score zones
What it measures
The SPA Score measures alignment between situation and practice, not absolute safety. A score of 95 for an Everyday User and a score of 95 for a High-Risk Activist represent very different setups. The Activist's 95 requires vastly more hardening. While you can currently compare against other people of your archetype, the quiz may get more personalized in the future to make this challenging. Just to set expectations from Day 1, we think people should see this as their own, personlized score.
Saving your profile
The SPA Quiz tracks your score history directly in your profile URL. Every time you complete a fresh quiz, the result is appended to your saved link. No accounts, no servers, no tracking. Over time, the results page displays a chart showing how your score has changed across check-ins. The quiz tracks how long ago you last took it and displays the age of your profile (days, weeks, months, or years). When you return to a saved link, you're offered three options:
- View Previous Results: jump straight to your last results without retaking anything to check your results again.
- Update Your Results: re-answer the questions to reflect changes in your life or setup.
- Start a New Quiz: begin completely fresh (your saved URL remains intact)
We recommend retaking the quiz after any major life change: a new job, a new device, a change in household, or a shift in your threat landscape. Even without a specific trigger, checking in every couple of months is a good habit. Our scoring also evolves as the privacy and security landscape shifts, so older results may drift from reality over time.
Methodology note
The SPA Score is developed and maintained by Techlore. The assessment methodology, archetype definitions, and scoring system are our own work, guided by 10+ years of education and community feedback. We've heard from thousands of everyday people, worked directly with business executives, activists, and public figures to give us the understanding of what is generally necessary for each situation.
We've put significant effort into making this quiz as accurate and useful as possible, but no quiz can account for every situation, and ours is no exception. Everyone's circumstances are different, and that will always be true no matter how much we improve it. Use it as a powerful tool, not a final verdict. Our goal is to distill complex information into something genuinely actionable, and we believe our SPA tools do that well. But if something feels off for your situation, trust your instincts, and let us know so we can keep making it better.