I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts.
I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it's "strict" setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn't work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I'm in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don't use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I'd like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can't find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN.
I think that's all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn't sacrifice too much convenience?
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Firefoxes strict settings are okay but not perfect, have a look at librewolf for an easy solution, or my Arkenfox softening tool to modify arkenfox to be easy to use.
Did you debloat your xiaomi phone already? May help with some things, but of course not much, but
do you have google play services enabled?
what keyboard do you use
what mobile browser
Facebook messenger is cancer as its unencrypted afaik, so they read everything. Poor you.
An adblocking dns is good, do you have android tracking blocklists, to make xiaomi phones usable? But to be fair, samsung is way worse
Try shelter and isolate all these bad apps and disable them when not needed
I hadn't thought about the keyboard! I use SwiftKey (which I now realise is a terrible choice) from way back before I started caring about my privacy. Do you have any good recommendations? The main thing I need is the three word suggestions to have dictionaries for multiple languages. I use Firefox on mobile as well, with pretty much the same settings and uBlock. I'm not sure what you mean by having Google Play services enabled, as I did say I use the store. Is there a way to use it and have the services disabled? Won't that mess with banking apps? Also not sure what you mean by android tracking blocklists, but I think my dns blocks ads and tracking. I also don't get any ads in system apps like settings for example. Tbh, I am a little afraid of debloating as I tried that ages ago on a Sony M5 and after uninstalling the apps, my phone started running insanely hot and slow. I had to put it right next to the air conditioner to be able to use it, reinstalled all the apps and the problem went away :D
Florisboard.
Its default settings are not perfect, you can theme it OLED black which is nice, it has an internal clipboard with the action bar for "mark all" "copy" "crop" "paste" "delete last entry" "show history" and even cursors. Its brilliant for privacy as its internal clipboard cant be seen by apps if you disable "sync to system"
It doesnt have autocomplete and after a quick rise and development its very rarely developed anymore. But I dont miss anything, just autocomplete and maybe Sayboars Speech to text would be nice addons
And no, debloating doesnt cause overheating normally
Florisboard is great. Internal clipboard function.
NextDNS has presets to block OS tracking, this is different from just Ads. Any DNS with variable blocklists can use these. There is a windows one, but not sure about Xiaomi.
You dont need google services to use Aurorastore. It works currently.
Also try creating a shelter profile and then disabling the play services using adb in the main one with
undefined
adb shell
pm uninstall --user 0 APPNAMES
you find commands online.
Google play services spy on everything with privileged permissions (all) as they are system apps. On GrapheneOS you can install them as regular user apps, and they still work.
I recommend Mull from F-droid instead of firefox. Try adding my custom addon collection: