Here are some things you can do, roughly ranked:
- Use a password manager
- Assume anything you post/do online/financially can and will be used to build an advertising profile on you/train AI/be shared with government authorities
- Disable ad personalization/history/sharing of information via privacy settings of mobile phone, mobile apps, Google, Facebook, banks, credit cards, ISP, cellular service, everything
- Turn off third-party cookies.
- Use an ad-blocker on desktop and mobile. They also help prevent a lot of tracking.
- Don’t use Chrome. Consider Firefox/Brave/whatever else
- Avoid using ad-supported services/companies. Consider using paid alternatives. This means using alternatives to Google Search, GMail, Facebook for photos, etc etc.
- Use a profile deleting service like https://monitor.mozilla.org/
- Different browser profiles: general use, Facebook, personal (GMail / Google Docs), and maybe more
- Use a VPN w/ secured DNS
- Many Google accounts: one for general, YouTube, Google Docs/personal, and maybe more
- Use a different email address to sign up for every account. I use StartMail’s aliases
- Don’t use your personal phone number for most things (finance/healthcare excepted). Get another number via a call and SMS forwarding service
Yep. For example, if your ISP is in the advertising business, I would definitely use a VPN, even after opting out w/ the ISP/cellular provider. IMO a lot of times when you opt out, it doesn’t mean they stop collecting information, it means they paused using that information for ad targeting.
ex: https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/customer-proprietary-network-information