I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts. I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it’s “strict” setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn’t work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I’m in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don’t use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I’d like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can’t find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN. I think that’s all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn’t sacrifice too much convenience?
You’re well above average. I’d say pretty good. One thing you didn’t say: Are you often logged in into the services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Discord, … Because if you are, they can tie everything together with your account. And did you sign up for those services with your phone number? That’d be bad because it’s a unique identifier. Regarding the phone it depends on which apps exactly you installed from the Play store. Most have trackers and there are shady apps out there. I also mainly rely on F-Droid and that’s the way to do it. Another thing is email. If you use gmail, all your correspondence gets scanned, regardless of what you do at home. And you shouldn’t use membership programs for discounts in real life.
Other than that. I think I do more or less the same things you mentioned. Plus I replaced the Android my phone came with.