I think it's best to just look at your threat model and adjust things accordingly. For most of us, that's probably the Google's of the world and poor opsec habits. I use things like SimpleLogin, Privacy.com, GrapheneOS, etc to make small improvements. You're not going to compete with a nation state if they want to get you. But it isn't futile to make small improvements to reduce overall risk.
I think the common pitfall is many assume you can still have the same level of conveniences simply with more security. I'm here to suggest it's not worth the effort. Finding alternatives to the same things often just complicates your life without adding any net increase in privacy/security. As long as you're working against natural human behavior, you're going to lose.
For example, drinkers can become pot smokers when they want to quit. Pot smokers can become drinkers when they need to get clean for a new job. They substitute one vice for another to get the singular outcome they require for the moment while maintaining a similar level of "relief" but still having the same level of DUI risk. (remember this an example lol)
So long as your device has a radio, I don't care how much nerds will sell you on buzzwords, like linux, encryption, and tor, lora, mesh networks, etc. If it generates a signal, it can be tracked, it just matters how that applies to your life.
It doesn't matter if you cover your face or change your clothes, your gate identifies you no matter where you go. There isn't enough entropy in all human behavior to make it untraceable. If you're too random, you're unique and therefor traceable. If you're too similar you're tracked with the herd, so anytime you step out, you're again unique and traceable.
On the few podcast episodes I did, I wanted to get across to the audience that the human behavior aspect. You could use any anti-tracking tool in the world, but if you open your browser at the same time every day, and look the same stuff up with the same tools, you've once again been identified.
Now some of this is completely true. Some of this is only true if attention is paid to you. Right now... I'm arguing that a future exists where we're our human behavior is monitored by so many metrics, that it doesn't matter what you use, so long as it generates signals you're behavior is identifiable.
I'm suggesting focusing on how you can control your interaction with tech. Limit the information that can be traced. It can be done, not all hope is lost, and not every action is futile, but if you don't understand what's being tracked, you can never fully understand how to protect yourself. You'd just be like everyone else in the cyber crowd that jumps from VPN or Email service every few years when they learn the service had a compromise or a bad privacy policy.
So my advice is, If you're in tech for a living, you should really invest some time into how things really work. If you're not in tech limit your interaction as much as possible.
