Let me be clear first: If you want to get rid of advertising, then yes your advise is OK. If you want to defend against the Surveillance system, it's not close to adequate. This is the fundamental gap I'm trying to address.

I understand where your heart is at, but you are making a mistake. Free/Libre software is about Freedom, and from that guarantee we can build other guarantees about security and privacy. However Freedom itself does not guarantee security nor privacy. Freedom is also the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.

To be clear, it is possible to defend yourself, but ofc no defense is perfect.

There is a perfect defense: Don't use technology. Much of this advise is trying to use technology to fight technology. It's a rabbit hole that has no bottom, and the best defense is to not play. The problem is attack surface. Technology is incredibly complex and is chattier than your extroverted :LIB: friend at brunch, and boy howdy do people love to listen! You can reduce this attack surface, but it never goes away as long as you are using technology.

But for general privacy in your day to day life that isn't practical, and "every cellphone is snitching on you" is way too reductive, even if it's true in a sense.

Here's the trail crumbs you might make on the Web as you browse each and every website:

1. DNS request - sends URL domain/hostname (www.hexbear.net, for example), collects IP and timestamp. Your ISP is often the default DNS, so they are collecting this information. Google (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) as well.
2. 1st party HTTP(S) request - Encrypts body but sends URL domain/hostname in the clear across the network, collects IP and timestamp.
3. 3rd party request - Usually advertising, but also could be security (Sign In With Google, Okta, etc), collects IP and timestamp
4. 3rd party cookies - Sent and updated with every request to that domain (Amazon cookie to Amazon.com, FB cookie to Facebook.com, etc), collects IP and timestamp
5. 1st party advertising - Think Amazon's "Customers also bought...", has full access to your request, collects IP and timestamp and User-Agent.
6. Logs - Usage data about what you do on the website, both front-end and back-end, collects IP and timestamp
7. Telemetry - Usage data about what you do with your app, collects IP and timestamp

You can use custom software for #3 and #4 on the device (most of the advise here), but do you block google.com? You can use a network DNS blocker (e.g. Pi-Hole) for #1, #3, #4, and some of #7, but that only works on networks you control. VPNs advertise as solving #2, but that's pure ideology; it only moves where the routing traffic goes and still can log information in transit.

This also ignores data brokers who buy all of this information and compile it together.

And this is just the advertising/surveillance defense against tech companies. I haven't even touched or defense.

That's not protection, and worse its giving you a false sense of security. I don't make my recommendations because I hate tech, but because (from a security posture) the attack surface is so large it is impossible to verify it cannot be used against you, and the consequences of that mistake are life-altering.

• A SIM merely says you are Authorized to use the network. The phone still makes connections to the cellular network. All phones on the market allow emergency calls even without a SIM card.

• Both your cellular chip and your WiFi chip broadcast their unique MAC address to every router/tower they see, and all of this information is logged.

• Just like a burner phone, police can get the location data from the carrier and towers, and use that to trace where that phone went. If you brought that phone near other devices, those devices or your own location can be deduced.

You see this over and over: Big Protest ➡ Police Geofence warrant ➡ Cell logs ➡ Arrests. Given the criminalization of protests this will become the norm. If you want to get rid of advertising, many of the suggestions here are fine. But none of them go far enough to protect you beyond that, even from Big Tech surveillance.