For a small win you can use Mullvad for DNS when you don't have devices connected to a VPN.

I configured it as the upstream DNS from my pi-hole, I recommend the one with no blockers on so if you need to turn of vpns and disable blocking on your pi-hole nothing else will get in the way.

Light patterns

I see a lot of my old habits in this post. What helped me was to create a threat model for myself, what do I really want to protect and what can I do to protect it with a reasonable cost and time effort.

I found that my most effective controls were using a VPN, using an email relay service and using Linux as an OS (I use ubuntu and fedora because I value my time and compatibility, I used Arch years ago and it was a part-time job to keep it going)

For example, if you are using a VPN, you don't need to be blocking google and cloudflare.

You are seeking a perfection you will never achieve, so find your comfortable and do that.

Last piece of advice, nobody is judging you. Most people on this lemmy community are doing more than 99% do on a daily basis, but its not a competition.

Can this meme format be called bottom text?

I had a good experience with Ionos using their £1/mo VPS, I currently use two for small services.

However for anything more expensive they are around the same price as hetzner, better service without the lock-in.

This isn't really sustainable, email relay is the way to go.

I became a sysadmin, I like being able to learn to get around problems. But an outsider just sees someone spending all morning fiddling with winetricks when it 'just works' on windows.

I came here hoping that someone else thought of this

You can block them with a Pi-hole. ^DNS

Use a relay service, like simplelogin or mozilla relay.