How am I doing and where can I improve?

Privacy and Security Get Advice
1

What do you want advice about?

Hi, can you please help me asses how good is my privacy and where can I improve?

  1. I use iOS with an old Apple Account which is connected to a proton mail adress (changed from gmail)

  2. I have a Proton email account which I use for personal stuff where my name must be known (insurance, hospital, bank, university, government stuff, password manager, Ente Auth)

  3. I have Tutanota account, not in my name, which I use for creating aliases over SimpleLogin (after creating an alias and an account connected to it, I create 2FA if possible and delete the alias from SimpleLogin so it can’t be connected to me anymore.

  4. I use 2FA app (Ente Auth) and a password manager (Bitwarden) and use password with over 30 characters.

  5. Besides Reddit and Goodreads where I use aliases and fake names, I have no other social media. I deleted Facebook and Instagram where I didn’t post anything anyway.

  6. I have a Windows laptop with a local account and I disabled as much of the telemetry as possible and deleted One Drive and Copilot from the PC.

  7. For browsing the web I use Brave, Mullvad, Firefox and Librewolf for different purposes and I use DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as a search engine. All browsers are set up to delete search and browsing history upon closing and I have shields on in Brave.

  8. I don’t use “log in with Apple”

  9. I have a whatsapp account under a new phone number where I didn’t give any name or email.

  10. I use private DNS system wide on my PC and on my phone, I don’t use a VPN.

In brief, tell us about your privacy threat model?

I don’t know really. I’m kind of scared of everything turning into a giant police state in the EU the most.

Thank you very much for your answers!

2

I use iOS with an old Apple Account which is connected to a proton mail adress (changed from gmail)

I would delete the whole account and send a data deletion request. After that I would create a new one.

I use 2FA app (Ente Auth) and a password manager (Bitwarden) and use password with over 30 characters.

Try to buy two FIDO2 Keys and use Passkeys as well as MFA with FIDO2.
My recommendation: USB-A YubiKey 5 NFC Two Factor Security Key | Yubico

Besides Reddit and Goodreads where I use aliases and fake names, I have no other social media. I deleted Facebook and Instagram where I didn’t post anything anyway.

Is there a reason for that? Especially reddit is pretty hostile.

I have a Windows laptop with a local account and I disabled as much of the telemetry as possible and deleted One Drive and Copilot from the PC.

Get away from Windows and switch to Linux.

For browsing the web I use Brave, Mullvad, Firefox and Librewolf for different purposes and I use DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as a search engine. All browsers are set up to delete search and browsing history upon closing and I have shields on in Brave.

LibreWolf can’t auto-update itself on Windows, so please check for updates every time you boot up your device.

I use private DNS system wide on my PC and on my phone, I don’t use a VPN.

Maybe something over TLS like DoH(DNS over HTTPS) with blocking? NextDNS as an example.

I don’t know really. I’m kind of scared of everything turning into a giant police state in the EU the most.

This will not happen so fast.

3

I have not tested it, but on LibreWolf docs there was a link to this repository to auto-update the Windows version. It’s 3rd party, but also FOSS.

Do you have any good reason to stay on Windows? If not, try out Linux and don’t fear it. It’s not just better for privacy reasons, it also makes more fun to use. At least it is my opinion. What applications do you use on Windows? If they’re not FOSS, you may can start with these. Otherwise you already have already 70% of the Linux experience and transition should be easy.

4

I did this once, by mistake, for a bank account. What a pain in the butt that was.

5

Yes, I need Windows for some software that is only availible on it and I don’t want to have lag from a VM. In regaed to FOSS I use Libre Office, Ente Auth, Bitwarden, Firefox, Librewolf, Brave. There are some research programs that I need (Publish or Perish for example).

6

I use Mullvad’s family DNS system wide. I’m considering deleteing my Apple Account and creating a new one. You can (at least on Windows) shedule it tocheck for updates automatically and that’s what I did, it’s a check box option in Librewolf updater.

7

I looked about Publish or Perish (thought that are two programs) and they’re supported via WINE as far as I read. So these should mostly run just fine. If you don’t know what WINE is: for games there exist Proton, the program that makes many Windows games run better on Linux than Windows and it is just a WINE specialized for games. So no nonperformance VM evolved.

If you have other programs that do not work with WINE, I can totally understand to stay on Windows for performance reasons. But it is may worth it to look what applications are supported by WINE if you care about (you also can test it on an USB-Linux without wiping Windows).