https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Fingerprinting

https://amiunique.org/

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

There are plenty of resources for this already.

It will know as much data as it would for any other wireless client. MAC address mostly.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to do here. Yes, if you use a phone as a hotspot, everything going through will be associated with that hotspot phone’s IMEI.

I don’t have a specific recommendation, but you can look over the big list maintained by Reddit users: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/edit

You probably want one hosted in a non-cooperative country, and one that doesn’t keep logs.

What are you trying to accomplish by using a VPN?

Yes, in theory any program, including Windows itself, could upload data to the Internet if not blocked.

Windows can be restricted by a network firewall. Programs can be restricted by filesystem permissions and the OS firewall, and not running them as admin.

But is this happening? Unlikely, unless you have malware. You can inspect your traffic.

I’d be more surprised if countries like the US, China, and Russia weren’t trying to influence each other.

It seemed like the best source available from a ten-second Google search while taking a shit, but I can nip down to the local CIA field office and pick up some classified ops docs if you want a primary source, I’m sure they make that info available.

Yeah, only megacorps and slave labor! Because fuck people owning the means of production, am I right?

What do you mean “what psyops”? Are you unaware that both China and the US, as well as almost every other country around the world, conduct foreign influence campaigns?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-voters-targeted-by-chinese-influence-online-researchers-say-2024-09-03/

And I’m sure I don’t need to give you examples of American campaigns. Most of Hollywood contributes.

Yeah and both of those are bad. Product dumping kills local businesses, like how the US sending clothes overseas kills domestic textile industries, and processed food aid kills farms needed for self-sufficiency.

Better targeted psyops. Same the the CIA does.

It’s both.

Suspicious, denied.

Trustworthy in terms of what?

They have a shadow profile on you, because you viewed sites that embed Facebook objects such as like buttons, but this particular item does not affect you.

Wifi only is perfectly fine, if you aren’t going to use the phone part of the cellphone.

Monitored and secured are mutually exclusive.

Yeah because it’s a text generator. You’re using the wrong tool for the job.

Only time will tell. But you may get better info from their own forum: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/23080-aosp-and-pixel-device-support

Not necessarily. The longer the better. Most people use a 4-digit passcode or simple pattern. A long passcode, generated by a CSPRNG is probably the best. I don’t know how biometrics stack up.

Same thing. Your lockscreen password/pattern/whatever is also the user partition decryption key. This is why BFU/AFU is a thing. After a reboot, the first unlock decrypts the partition. The key is stored in RAM. The only way to reset this is to reboot.

$50k of compute power, which may seem like a lot

To an individual. For a business, that’s a quarterly spend. For the government, it doesn’t even come up in budget reviews.

It means they can rip the encrypted data off the phone, then take it over to a system with a bunch of GPUs and brute-force the password.

Unlikely, but possible. Ad networks might buy location history data from cell providers.

Bitdefender is not a Microsoft product

The majority of environmental damage is perpetrated by corporations. Individual use pales in comparison.

What are you trying to accomplish with a VPN?

You’ve already got Grapheneos, so the next step would be not using Google play or other Google/Facebook/etc. apps and services.

If you can root your phone and use an xposed module, maybe. Or the EU forces them. Otherwise, there’s not much option.

Keep in mind that a lot of countries have introduced ID requirements on stuff like phones due to people like terrorists and drug traffickers buying them as burners.

I think it means in the encrypted state. Still, bad.

Most software has hardware acceleration. AES has been in Intel processors for over a decade, for example.

Probably these: https://usa.visa.com/pay-with-visa/cards/prepaid-cards.html

That’s for the US. I don’t know about other regions.

Yes. Same use case as any removable drive, but encrypted. And the encryption is system-agnostic, so you don’t need any special software on the system to mount it.

They’re about as spywarey as games developed in other countries. Everyone uses analytics libraries, for example.

Wikipedia is not a primary source

Yes, unless it lets you list exceptions, that would defeat the point. You might need to set up a full router and firewall.

Google, but it sounds like OP’s issue is the junk, not any actual association with Google.

Factory reset it and don’t connect it to the network.

If you want to stream, use a Chromecast. I’ve been using the same one for like ten years now, never an issue. Pick the media on my phone, hit cast, done.