hey everybody, i’ve been lurking in the forums for sometime. I have made it a big thing in my life to be more digitally private. My threat model is primarily reducing all the targeted ads i see online, as well as trying my best to degoogle (more on that later) and reducing info sent to them. i’ve been an apple user my entire life, like full on ecosystem. i know that’s not the most ideal, but i wasn’t conscious about any of this until like 2 months ago. I want to get a GOS phone one day, but i got this iphone brand spanking new last year, and i don’t want to contribute to e-waste. I wanna keep this phone for at least 5-6 years, and then consider a degoogled pixel from there.
here are all the changes ive made, and some potential choke points
ios safari→brave browser with duckduckgo
macos safari→ hardened firefox with duckduckgo
i’m not much of an ai user despite working in software, I’ve been only using local Ais, but i’ve played around with duck.ai, and i have their subscription for the personal data removal.
Gmail→Proton Mail, some icloud use for unimportant email (both with email aliases)
Proton VPN, Proton Pass
Advanced Data Protection enabled, Disabled all forms of analytics sharing, as well as disabled any unnecessary app permissions. Social media free, Uses signal for messaging android buddies, imessage for everyone else. Notifications off for most apps.
Here are some choke points, i’m an avid football(soccer) fan. I use youtube tv and youtube on two separate old google accounts that sadly have my real name tied to them, and my personal cell. I know it’s not the most ideal, but again it’s a trade off for my hobbies. I have been lately watching all these games on my ps5, using the apps there instead. I also use prime video, and peacock. I turned off personalized ads on all of these apps.
I’ve looked into some alternatives for youtube, i’ve been using unwatched over it. My questions are basically these:
Am I doing enough, not enough, or overkill for my threat model?
What can i do to improve? I’m open to any and all suggestions, I’ve followed everything i could from the iphone guide as well, but if there’s anything else i missed im all ears! thank you so much everyone