Beginner's Guide
Hey ya'all I've been working on blocking big tech from tracking me and manipulating the information I view. So here we will post tips that we find to help keep users safe! A general rule of thumb is never use software provided by these big giants, use FOSS. FOSS stands for free open source software. It's much safer because these proprietary apps/software from big tech don't allow you to see how they tick whereas open source software allows you to dig into it and see if there is anything malicious in it.
Some things I've done is switched from Google to DuckDuckGo. It doesn't track your searches like Google does.
I've also moved away from Chrome and installed Brave. It reroutes traffic from your browser to other servers to make it difficult for websites to track you. As you may know, accepting cookies allows websites to see what other sites you use. The best browser to use is multiple, called browser isolation! All browsers have what they call browser fingerprints which identify you. If, for instance, you need to access a Google services like Gmail for example, ONLY do so on one browser. Do anything else on other browsers. This way Google will know who you are and what you are doing but to them they only think you are accessing Google services, they won't know your other business. I like to online shop on one browser, access financial info on another, search things on a third, and visit personal sites on yet another.
One thing you'll defintely want to do for privacy is delete all social media apps like Facebook and Instagram along with their accounts. With Instagram, they can now access your microphone and camera at will. There are private apps you can use for Youtube as well such as
Newpipe which does not have any proprietary Google apis.
If you have an Android, do NOT use the default keyboard!! The gboard if it's stock(Samsung has their own keyboard) is not private and these companies can see EVERYTHING you type via these preinstalled apps. Good alternatives for Android are AnysoftKeyboard and Open Board. For iOS there is Fractions keyboard or Typewise offline keyboard(unfortunately these are paid apps) These have no access to the internet and do not log your information.
Here's a youtube channel for the internet privacy guy for more ideas!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BraxMe/videos