I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts. I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it's "strict" setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn't work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I'm in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don't use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I'd like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can't find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN. I think that's all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn't sacrifice too much convenience?
Easy, but I wouldnt suggest you make things too inconvenient (I personally am fine with unbreaking things).
Some thoughts/suggestions:
ProtonVPN is full of lies and will get you no where. You can't just pay to make yourself invisible
Willing to expand on that? They are well audited, and changing your ip helps to disassociate from your approx location (also allows for multiple browsers to come from a common ip).
Also of course a vpn isnt going to make you invisible. Fingerprinting can allow you to uniquely identify browsers through using a handful of metrics.
VPNs were never intended to make you anonymous, if you expected a VPN to make you anonymous you were very mistaken
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
VPNs were never intended to make you anonymous
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Examples?