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DNS adblocking with AdGiardHome (open source on GitHub, better than Pi-Hole because it supports out of the box regex matching and DoH/DoT which means it will also encrypt your queries so your ISP doesn’t mess with them, mine used to do and I don’t trust them).

Hosts adblocking on Android (AdAway) + pointing the Android system DNS resolver to a DoT server.

Firefox (PC) with uBlock Origin, Local Dan and HTTPS mode only so it will stop and warn about any page trying to load over plain HTTP. DoH configured to point to my own adblocking server.

Firefox (Android) with AdGuard extension (it blocks popups and invasive ads on mobile better than uBlock Origin and breaks less mobile websites), Decentraleyes (LocalCDN not available for mobile) and HTTPS Everywhere set to EASE mode to force HTTPS.

All my browsers configured to erase all data (cache, cookies, etc) as soon as they are closed. It’s almost like private mode but it bypasses the annoying popups that some websites display when browsing in private mode. It also means I don’t risk keeping tracking cookies for a long time if some cookie manages to bypass my filters because I close my browser daily.

This is not a 100% fool proof solution but works well enough and doesn’t break too many websites.

I’m a bit late but I’ve been running Android with an extra work profile to isolate apps for years. As others mentioned VPNs are a per-profile thing, so you can just use your Insular or Shelter app to install (clone) the VPN app to the work profile. Then just make sure you are always running 2 VPNs (normal profile and work profile).

Anyone reading this: keep in mind that there’s a conflict of interest, the authors of that piece work for a competing technology (a VPN), some of the things they complain about Tor is actually users making simple mistakes or not properly configuring the software (deviating from the safe default settings) and that those things can also happen with a VPN.

I prefer not to have any dickbars, they are kind of annoying and take valuable vertical space, if this is added to Lemmy it should be an option people can enable/disable showing avatars or nsfw content.

I didn’t know about that one, looks great. I could never trust 100% NoScript since this happened, it’s nice to see a good open source alternative.

F-Droid is slow, can’t blame you for that but your comment is exactly what I thought.

4GB is too much, I found some Windows 10 laptops with 2GB.

I like that, the icons are well done. Very clever use of folder shortcuts as separators.

I totally forgot about that, thanks.

Aurora Store is that, you use the Play Store without having to create a Google account. If you really want a phone with no Google apps it’s better not to mess with adb go remove them, you’ll likely end up with a half working device. See if you can get LineageOS installed on your phone (it doesn’t come with any Google apps by default). Also, someone else on this thread recommended another app to download apks, it’s called APKGrabber, also found on F-Droid. I haven’t tried it but looks promising.

Edit: just be careful with LineageOS, if you do it wrong you may end up with a bricked phone.

You are right, very annoying when it can’t connect and sometimes happens. I didn’t know about APKGrabber, thanks for the recommendation.

If you want to install software from the Play Store without using the Play Store or having to have a Google account install Aurora Store from F-Droid and use the built-in anonymous account.

I second this advice, it helped me go back to reading after school ruined my passion for it. It does not even have to be as much as half an hour, I started with 15 minutes, consistency is what matters.

Thanks! I’ll do as I usually do with Android phones and wait until my Android version gets too old for running modern apps or stops receiving security updates, once that happens I’ll unlock the bootloader, replace the OS with an unofficial but more recent version and root it.

Enabling the option in android one actually unlock the bootloader?

It opens a pop-up with a warning about device protection features not going to work if the setting is turned on, and two buttons “cancel” and “enable.” Selecting “enable” just enables it, doesn’t ask for any account.

Edit: do they ask for a key after or before that screen? If it is after, during the fastboot commands, I can’t risk testing that because if it works without a key it’ll delete all the data I have on the phone (I’ve never done this before on a modern phone, my previous, older phone was easier because the bootloader wasn’t locked).

There’s a problem with that. Third party cookies used for tracking aren’t being deleted in your whitelisted sites, there are three and a half solutions for that. You can use permanent containers for each whitelisted website to keep them isolated, you let the new total cookie protection do its job (and hope the heuristics don’t accidentally allow tracking cookies too), (half solution) you block third party cookies and risk being stuck in an authentication loop or (best in my opinion) use uBlock Origin which should block most (if not all) of the tracking websites you’ll encounter.

This is an entirely different thing, temporary containers are kind of “private tabs,” total cookie protection is for people who don’t want to get logged out when they close the browser or tab but still want to be protected against third party cookies (without breaking things that depend on them like being logged in on a Microsoft account).

xiaomi allow to unlock the bootloader after you make a MI account and wait some time

Does this happen only in the MIUI version? I have one with Android One and the option has always been available to me.

For long term that I may or may not ever read I use Pocket. For things I want to read later in the same day or the next day I sync the tab from Firefox mobile to desktop so next time I’m on the computer what I want to read appears automatically (and if I’m still interested I read it, otherwise I just close the tab).

If you open the report you see that it thinks it contains malware because:

1. “Found Tor Address” this is because F-Droid comes with two repositories configured, one of them is from The Guardian Project, the people that distribute the Tor Browser and other apps on Android and one of their mirrors is an .onion address
2. “Removes its application launcher (likely to stay hidden)” F-Droid uses that for the panic button

There’s nothing else that is even remotely worrying, the other points come from things that shouldn’t be marked as dangerous like sending UDP packets, using non standard TCP ports or Bluetooth (these things are for sharing your local repository over WiFi or Bluetooth) and a couple of other very obvious permissions needed for installing apps.

That sandbox is greatly overreacting to things almost all Android apps do or require for normal functionality like connecting to the internet or running on boot.