I have some bad news for you, Toot :(
Eh I don’t feel like giving bad news, just please see my response to this question and extrapolate.
Extra things you can do:
Firefox browser has built in protection against tracking and you can use container tabs to isolate each site you go to further.
Ublock Origin browser extension will increase that protection. Make sure it is Ublock Origin and not any of the clones and lookalikes.
DNS level protection. I use what’s called a Pi Hole, a raspberry Pi on my network acting as a home DNS server.
Here are my top blocked URLS for the month of May. I utilize all the above protections and as you can see the Pi Hole is still doing the majority of the heavy lifting. And it’s a constant game of whack-a-mole as they change a single digit to bypass the blocks in place.
123 THOUSAND requests from Roku, all blocked without a single detriment to our media watching experience. No one in my household even uses Netflix. It’s honestly sickening. People love to talk about how much energy crypto uses, but no one questions this at all.
…welp. I guess I’m getting a pihole.
Does ram matter? The pi4 comes in 1, 2, 4, or 8 gigs of ram. Each priced accordingly, and maybe I need the 8 gig? Or can I save some money and get the 1 gig?
I believe Pihole can be run from a docker container so if you have any hardware lying around that will do. The hardware requirements are extremely light, I believe the minimum RAM requirement is like 512 MB so any one of those should do. Personally, mine is running on a 4 with 8 Gigs of RAM and I have literally never experienced a single issue other than needing to power cycle it once or twice a year.
