The Ontario government has had a few initiatives to push smart thermostats and my area just had our water meters upgraded to smart ones. I know nothing about the water meters, but I block the Google telemetry from my Nest Thermostat (unrelated to the gov’t program) via my pi-hole at least. By definition, if you sign on to the Enbridge thermostat initiative you are agreeing to send your usage. Not really sure of the impacts of this article on Canada, but pretty chilling nonetheless!
I use Shelter from F-Droid to create a work profile and then install RethinkDNS on that profile which blocks any trackers from the “bad” apps (you can add a tonne of blocklists). Additionally, if you have a Pixel, GrapheneOS has total app isolation (including storage scopes) so Messenger only has access to what you allow.
If you haven’t already, be sure to convert it to Bluetooth mode from WiFi before the end of December or you won’t be able to use it anymore…I only found this out after trying to set it up with my Retropie. The link to the google web tool to convert it is here!
I have this exact same issue with Proton VPN using RethinkDNS…my Wireguard proxy works for a while but then randomly cuts out (on my second user profile). In my case it looks like there’s a kill switch when that happens at least but still…can’t find any reason why it keeps dropping.