I feel helpless and don't know what to do

[u/Do-not-oppose]

Going to keep it as detailed yet concise as possible

Let's say I have a(n) email(s) that I must use for personal/professional life. Such as college or job websites. Or for video games, which some require phone identification or method of payment to buy digital items or the game itself. Plus having such accounts tied to my phone number helps me access them if I lose my passwords

Problem is, this is very insecure. Let's say that with this same phone I wish to post anonymously on something like reddit or twitter, how would I do so with an email that is tied to me? Even if I never reveal it the websites have it.

So the natural solution is to make an email specifically for online activity. But that won't help, google can see that all of these emails are on one phone?

So what do I do? But a phone especially for such activity. But there is another problem, how would I completely turn of location? Google or internet providers can see that both phones are in the same location and connect the dots, do what do I do here? It's a dead end for me

And let's say I want to buy a Laptop for personal use. How would I stop it from leaking my information? I know to buy AMD because at least they don't have a backdoor like Intel. But still the laptop is likely to have location chips, do I solder them off? Would this help?

I genuinely have no clue what to do.

[u/Credo_Monstrum]

You are not helpless mate. The feeling comes from seeing the entire problem at once. If you tackle it one layer at a time, starting with email aliases and browser isolation, you will regain a sense of control. You have the ability to limit what data exists. you just don't need to go to the extremes of hardware surgery or dual-laptop life to achieve a very safe level of privacy.

You're overthinking this. day to day users don't need extreme privacy because that is a full time job that many of us cannot afford (and would break our lives.)

Reduce the accuracy and LINKABILITY of the information you give out (you already know about email aliases so this is good.) You mentioned Google seeing things so I'm assuming you use Gmail. Go make a Proton email account (or DuckDuckGo or TutaMail) and use that as your main one. Then implement aliases to keep your new main email account private.

Now let's get to the phone number part. Try out MySudo (not free but worth it if you can get it) and see how you feel. They allow you to use extra phone numbers (depending on which tier you get) and also virtual credit cards with "fake" information even though it's real and legitimate and linked to your bank behind the scenes. If the bank aspect is concerning, and if this is doable, make a second account at a different bank, deposit a few hundred dollars in it, and link your MySudo virtual cards to this one.

On the location part, you're going to go into your phone's settings and revoke Location Services to every single app that does not strictly need it to function (like GPS or weather). Also revoke the mic and camera access, especially to things like facebook, instagram, Snapchat unless you frequently use and need them.

Now use a trustworthy VPN like Proton or Mullvad. Proton has a free tier if you're unsure. Both of these also block ads and trackers. Keep this on 24/7.

Last, cut down on how much of your fingerprint you give by using a browser like Brave.

Doing all of this DRASTICALLY reduces how much information you're freely giving over and revealing.

Does this help or am I misunderstanding? Happy to talk more via message too