Internet privacy starter pack
About a month ago I began using some systems to protect my security on the internet a bit more than nothing.
PiHole
It started when someone shared a link to the PiHole on Twitter. It is a self-hosted DNS service that is designed for RaspberryPi for blocking advertisements and trackers on the DNS level.
Turns out, about 20% of queries I make are blocked, and it doesn't hurt daily usage at all. Instead, now I have nice stats of a website I visit and handy tools to block/whitelist some of them.
You can install it directly on your router, on every device that you use.
For MacBook and AppleTV I changed DNS settings to use my custom IP address,
for iPhone, I found this app that can change DNS for all requests, even when you use cellular.
If you want to try it, the address is the same as the IP of this website 167.99.219.223
Matomo
After enabling PiHole, Google Analytics stopped working, so I found a self-hosted alternative and installed it on this website.
Matomo is pretty good. It has all essential analytics features and respects user privacy. For example, I configured it anonymize last digits of user IP. For example, 167.99.219.223 will be changed to 167.99.219.000 before saving.
If you don't want it, you can configure a browser to send "Do not track me" requests to websites.
VPN
And, of course, VPN. I hope everyone knows what it is.
This time I use Libreswan and xl2tpd setup.
If you are going to China, try streisand. VPN detecting and blocking technology there is the next level, something simple will be banned within a couple of days for sure.