Anyone use a VPN?

[Nick]

Put another way, the precautions you take should be proportionate to the threats. For the average internet user, nobody cares about your emails, messages or even your pr0n habits. You need to protect yourself against malware so your banking etc isn't compromised and you don't become part of a botnet that's used to attack others. You also need decent backups, but that's just sensible precaution against equipment failure as much as attack.

At the other extreme if you're an activist living under a repressive regime then you've got a lot to lose. You need every bit of security you can get. Or if you're a wealthy organisation with trade secrets then you're an obvious target; you should be employing good security people.

There are those who sit in a variety of camps - a group amongst whom I include myself...

I do come from a sensitive commercial and governmental security background, but I also don't see why I should give uncontrolled access to my personal data to companies like Meta & Alphabet.

However, I do agree that for the vast majority of people, "normal" precautions like using a VPN for public WiFi, decent AV plus a good firewall at home plus keeping everything up to recent patch levels (Windows/Linux/Android/iOS/iPadOS/macOS etc.) is a very sensible approach.

BTW. one of the problems with Pi-hole logging on an RPi is that the uSD card tends to fail after a while as the flash cells start dying. This is because most uSD cards are not designed for lots of read/write cycles (their provisioning for wear-levelling is poor to keep the cost down) - they are designed for occasion large writes and reads as photos are taken and then accessed. So, if using Pi-hole on an RPi using a uSD card as the system/logging device, make sure you have backups!

I've switched my "heavy duty" Pis (e.g. Pi 4s running Docker) to booting from and using M.2 cards only instead. M.2 cards are designed for huge numbers of read/write cycles just like a normal system disk.

[ppppenguin]

Nick, you have a good understanding of online security. I have modest knowledge. Joe Bloggs has none.

You know how to protect yourself against most online problems. I know enough to keep myself out of quite a few troubles. Joe Bloggs doesn't even know he's exposed to problems.

For the average person, using the internet is a bit like driving a car without any instruction. Probably OK until you crash.