A VPN alone will not do that. It will make it more difficult, as your location and IP address will be changing, but there are still methods.

Cookies, for one thing, are the main way in which you are tracked. In fact, most cookies exist solely for tracking. The solution: clear your cookies regularly, and use private mode when possible.

Browser fingerprinting can also be used. This method takes into account your user agent, screen resolution, installed extensions, hardware info, and also whether or not you have Do Not Track enabled (this had good intentions, but is counter-productive nowadays and should be disabled), and uses this data to single you out among other users. The solution: use a fingerprinting-resistant browser — such as Mullvad, Tor, Cromite, or Brave — never make your browser fullscreen, and don’t install any extensions that change the behaviour of a website (uBlock Origin and NoScript are exceptions). If you use Tor, do not sign into anything and try to use onion services when possible. If it’s not too inconvenient, also disable JavaScript.

However, you can still be tracked by certain services, regardless of your protections. The solution: Stop using data-hungry services — such as those run by Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. — and replace them with privacy-respecting alternatives.

Also be mindful of OS-level tracking. In a nutshell, don’t use Windows (Linux ftw) and avoid Android. If you have a compatible device, consider using GrapheneOS or LineageOS. Otherwise, it’s often possible to block OS-level trackers with an ad-blocking DNS, such as NextDNS.

Here are some further resources:

• Privacy Guides
  • Tor
  • Forum
• Techlore
  • PeerTube
• Naomi Brockwell
  • YouTube
  • LBRY

Even better!

Torrent is fully decentralised and therefore accessible in practically all jurisdictions, regardless of the server status. In many cases, I have also found Torrents to be considerably faster than direct downloads — however, your mileage may vary.

Sigmund’s mom has got it going on

She’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long

Sigmund, can’t you see? You’re just not the shrink for me

I know it might be wrong, but I’m in love with Sigmund’s mom

Older hardware. I read somewhere it’s lighter than Btrfs or XFS, and marginally faster than Ext4. Probably not my smartest move, in hindsight, but the system does fly.

(Oceania in this case being the USA’s domain, not China’s. When Nineteen Eighty-Four was written, the area consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, etc. was more commonly known as Australasia).

Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia.

I’m planning to install Slackel in a few weeks’ time. Does that count?

Slackware? In this economy?

It’s Slackware

It’s essentially Tor, but system-wide. Not sure why your original IP address is being shown, though. Works fine for me.

It has completion reminiscent of fish, the syntax of bash, the weight of ksh, and the POSIX compliance of sh.

suckless.org quite like it, too.

Interactive shell. I haven’t had an opportunity to script in it yet.

I like yash

I’m learning Perl - purely for fun - and yeah… it’s a little funky.

WebKit (e.g. GNOME Web, vimb, surf) is always there, and Servo is coming on leaps and bounds.

Also, for your consideration, there are:

• w3m (text-based, but supports displaying images with sixel, kitty, or framebuffer)
• Links2 (surprisingly usable)
• Dillo (better engine, but less features)
• NetSurf (better again, but you can’t use a custom search engine and the JS engine doesn’t seem to work)
• Chawan (text-based, but actually supports modern HTML and CSS; can display images using sixel or kitty; also supports gemini^[1])
• Ladybird (bad dev, good product)
• Stargate & Duckling (HTTP to Gemini^[1:1] proxies, so you can browse the web with Lagrange)
• Pale Moon & Basilisk (based on a fork of Gecko; still use XUL; may be a bit less secure, but disable JS and you might be alright)

Of course Librewolf, Waterfox, Tor Browser, ans Mullvad Browser are doing their best to resist the bullshit.

It’s proprietary, and therefore most of us don’t trust it.

Guess I’m using Links2 now…

There are a few network tools that don’t yet support Gemini (the network protocol, not the LLM). Maybe I could build something for that…

Zig, then.