Hello there! Im looking for increased privacy when it comes to my network connections. So far I know of TOR as an almost absolute bastion of security, but how do I ensure the remaining network traffic is encrypted and private? I know of signal for communication, and I’m aware of VPN’s. However I’m not sure whether to trust most providers regarding government interference as their software often isn’t open source. Is there a federated VPN of sorts, similar to how lemmy and other fediverse apps work?
It depends on what you want to achieve.
Encryption (if done right) will protect you against people eavesdropping on your connection, but not against tracking by cookies, device fingerprinting or similar technologies. I.e Google, Facebook etc. will still be able to track your every move. A web browser with good ad/tracking blocking will go a long way here, but if technically feasible you’ll also probably want something like Pi-Hole to complement your browser’s ad blocker and also catch network traffic from other apps.
For better recommendations you’ll probably need to tell us about what exactly it is that you want to protect yourself against.
Isn’t a secure operating system essential anyway though? Like, can any decent privacy level be achieved on a windows computer?