Unless there's a super hacker or NSA agent in the class that can figure out your password in real time.. You should be fine doing that.

Brother.. apple couldn't find my airtag when it was dropped somewhere in my yard.. How would apple find a submarine 5 miles below sea level in a faradayed submarine?

Since its for school you'll want it to be reliable and to work 100% of the time. I'd just get a big brand and not connect it to the internet if you don't want your data collected.

Other than that you can try to block the telemetry at the DNS level by VPN to your home with a pihole instance or using a private DNS.

If you really don't wanna use apple or google OS, then best bet is to buy the tablet for the hardware and try to flash a different OS. But then you'll risk it not working very well or having app compatibility issues.

I disagree. Firefox is fine, but saying chromium is spyware because its primarily maintained by google is like saying android is spyware.

Additionally chromium browsers are arguably more secure than Firefox, and has more advanced sand boxing. So much so that graphine OS used chromium instead of Firefox for their vanadium browser.

Only thing I agree with is not using brave.. Cause well.. They fishy.

I'm a tinkering nerd, so I like to have a headless Linux box.

I did use self hosting operating systems in the beginning, and they're nice. However, when I tried just a plain Ubuntu headless install, I felt way more accomplished after getting everything working.

Checking the router is probably the only way to see if someone is active on your network.

Can anybody hack your computer? No. Most people only know how to run scripts that are known and patched in most operating systems.

There are skilled people who may be able to create an exploit or find a vulnerability in your computer, but they will mostly target businesses or people they know will be worth it to hack, so most likely they won't bother you.

Generally if your on your own WiFi, having a WPA-2+ personal password is enough, but the more paranoid may have an IDS/IPS on their home network.

If your out and about, I'd personally use a VPN. I don't like public ones and like to recommend setting one up on your home WiFi instead.

If you think you've been hacked.. change your passwords and run virus scans. If you still don't feel safe, backup your data and reinstall your operating system.

This is straight from their privacy policy:

We do not sell your personal information in a way that most people would think of as a sale. However, we do participate in online targeted advertising and use analytics which allows tech companies, in exchange for our use of their services, to use user information collected from our App to improve their own products and to improve the services they provide to others. Under some laws, this is considered our "sale" of your user data to third parties. You can opt-out of this as provided in the “How to Submit a Request” section below.

Proprietary, targeting users who want to be anonymous, centralizes faux identities and passwords, provides plaintext SMS services..

It looks like a fed, and it smells like a fed..

DNS of HTTPS or TLS has been available for years, but it hasn't been adopted widely because the hello at the beginning if the three way handshake when connecting to a website ratted you out to your ISP anyways.

Forcing the older generation to change from a service that works perfectly fine to another one that isn't as polished and isn't a houshould name is a loosing battle.

I'd just bring up privacy concerns from time to time and suggest ways to increase their privacy when they ask for advice.

Check out wireguard, its way smaller and faster than OpenVPN and still FOSS.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-features/wireguard

Very user friendly if you install it with a GUI, almost to plug and play level.

I created an account while in the store with an email of fuckyou@thisisstupid.com and a basic password and surprisingly didn't have to verify the email. Then turned on a VPN to my house.

I plan on just creating a new account every time I go in just to fill up their database with nonsense.