So the question is posed about safety online. Most smart phones have GPS on the phones circuit board. Even using a VPN(Virtual Private Network), The GPS will give away your location. This was given away when I used the emsc website to view the quake data in the canary islands. As I scanned the globe I noticed my location was on the map.

What a giveaway letting criminals know when you are home, and where that is. From that time on I no longer use Google assistant(you know, the google bar where you talk to your phone), to help me find businesses close to me. I also have turned off the location settings of my phone. I will likely get another Tom Tom or the likes to guide me on my way, when the season is ripe for that kind of thing.

I would recommend using a VPN on your phone and connected devices. My phone provider offers a VPN as part of my service, however VPN service is cheap and my phone provider only offers in my state VPN. It is better if the criminals think I am in Germany for instance.

Computers are handy but!!! I lean towards an open source OS like Linux because they have peer reviewed coding. No back doors that can be hacked for your information. If you are using online gaming, STOP! What a way to introduce data mining apps. If you must play games have a game machine so nothing else but game data is shared.

What Linux distro do I recommend?

If I want to search for something I don’t care to save I recommend tails .

As secure goes this is an option.

I personally use Ubuntu and just watch what I do.

If I want to hide my history I like to use an onion browser with VPN.

Change your E-mail from the free services to, my favorite Proton mail.

The use of the Brave browser is good for both phone and computer. It is secure and you don’t have to many inconveniences. How do I know that it is more secure than other competitors in the field? My bank requires two stage authentication to access my account. This tells me that data is not maintained on my browser.

One more note: Some countries have laws to keep you secure more so than others. That means that internet laws are in your favor in some countries and not so great in others. The USA is in the not so great group. You must do your own research on these laws because they change.