Yeah, I don’t have a good answer for that.

It’s quite possible that even with the SIM card removed, it’s still actively ending up in cell tower logs. At least here in the United States, if you dial 911 from any device, no matter whether it has a SIM card installed and no matter whether it has service or not, 911 is supposed to be able to answer, which means that it must be able to talk to the cell phone towers even without a SIM card installed. You might be able to avoid that by keeping it on airplane mode, but there’s no guarantee of that.

I already have a proton account, so I have access to proton VPN. Otherwise i most likely would

I have not used mullvad myself, but i have heard from others that they are a good choice

I suggest keepassxc on desktop and keepassdx on android. If you are an iphone user keepassium is pretty good (mom approved).

As for whether you should be using Monero with Tor. You don’t have to, and it’s a lot slower if you do, but you do get some benefits if you do in certain scenarios.

I run my own local node which has a copy of the blockchain so that I don’t have to trust anyone except for myself and do not have access to a static IPv4 or IPv6 address and so I host my node as a Tor hidden service. By doing so, I can access my own personal node from anywhere in the world, no matter what network I’m on. And again, since I trust myself, I know that I’m getting correct data. By default, Monero.com and Cake Wallet use the Cake Wallet nodes and they are a rather trustworthy entity. So I would feel safe recommending just using them until you become more advanced and want to run your own. If you access the nodes through Tor, then obviously they won’t know your IP address. Whereas if you don’t access them through Tor, they would know your IP where you connect from. And it’s really up to you to determine whether that’s a problem for you or not. If you already use a VPN, you could just use that as well.

So the entire point of a password manager is to give each website a unique password so that if one password gets compromised, your passwords for every other site are not compromised. Based on current computing power, each password you have for an online service really should be about 20 characters and totally unique and random. And for a human, that’s basically impossible to accomplish. So what you do is have the password manager do that work for you and then you have one master password which accesses the password manager database. By doing so, you only have to remember two passwords. One password is to actually log into your system, such as your Linux login password, and the other is to log into your database on your password manager, which then has all of your other passwords. What I do for backing my password database up is that my primary computing device is my phone and so my password manager lives on my phone and once every three months I copy that password database to two separate flash drives in two separate physical locations. I then also copy it to my laptop. So I have two computing devices with the password manager file and two flash drives with the password manager file which are in separate locations. Even if someone were to steal the password manager database file off of one of my flash drives or something like that, they would still need the database password in order to access it. And I’ve made mine over 20 characters long, so no computer is going to be able to crack it unless it’s a quantum computer, which do not currently exist.

If you are able to manage online banking, then you will be able to manage Monero. The main difference between your online bank account and Monero is that if you lose your wallet seed phrase, it’s not recoverable. Unlike your bank account, where you can give them ID and your identification numbers and get your password reset. That is yet again another good reason to put your seed phrase in a password manager so that you can’t lose it. My personal suggestion would be the monero.com wallet made by cake wallet. Cake wallet offers multiple cryptos where monero.com only offers monero. Monero is digital cash. So you should get some and spend it on food and other such necessities and then get some more to replace it. Just like you would bills in your pocket. In terms of fiat currency, it will fluctuate because it is another currency. Just like how the euro will fluctuate in value against the US dollar, etc. In order to avoid that problem, it is best to fiat cost average where no matter what the current price says it is in your fiat currency, you’re always going to put X amount of fiat currency in it per month. So you might say, I’m always going to put $10 into it no matter what the price is. And that will help to smooth out the volatility compared to the fiat currency. You can also check out places like https://xmrbazaar.com/, which offer goods and services for Monero, or even my store at https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore where I sell items for Monero and keep the prices stable over long periods of time so that you know what to expect. I base my prices on the average and so therefore you might be able to find the same item cheaper elsewhere but at the price I charge I guarantee you will get the item and you will know what you’re going to pay for it. Since Monero fluctuates against fiat currency, most people only keep their prices stable for like 10 or 15 minutes at a time where I keep my prices stable for like three and four months at a time. So if you need to buy some toilet paper today and then you need to buy toilet paper three months from now, it’s going to be the same price so you know what to budget for.

As for buying Monero, governments don’t like it because they can’t trace it. So they purposely do their best to keep it off of centralized exchanges. So the best place to buy it is from https://retoswap.com/. It’s a piece of software you download on your Linux, Windows, or Mac computer. And it lets you access the RetoSwap decentralized exchange.

You can also work for it or sell items for it like I do on XMRBazaar. There are plumbers, electricians, therapists, etc. on XMRBazaar, who all earn Monero from their normal work by offering their services in exchange for Monero. You can also choose to be a proxy shopper where somebody wants an item and they will tell you the item they want and you purchase it and they will give you Monero or you can offer items yourself for Monero such as I do at my store front above. I don’t personally do proxy shopping where I will buy any item for you, but I try to have the basics such as razors, shaving cream, toilet paper, things that you would need in day-to-day life available for Monero.

To the best of my knowledge, that’s the only one they have.

Maybe something like the seeedstudio sensecap indicator?

You’re well on your way to making some really good choices. I also have to ask, are you using a password manager already? And if so, which one are you using? I use keepassxc on linux and keepassdx (from fdroid) on android and sync the database with a flash drive. I don’t trust any clouds, and so I don’t have any of my files on clouds. Also, are you using Monero yet?

What you can do is download the Aurora store from fdroid, which will give you access to Google Play apps without needing the Google Play store, and then go in and disable Google Play services. That way, if something breaks that you absolutely can’t live without, you can go turn it back on again. What you will find is that most apps will no longer send you notifications because most apps use what’s called Google FCM to provide you notifications which requires Google Play services. So in most cases apps will no longer send you notifications. Some apps will give you warnings to the effect of this app may not work properly without Google Play services and give you an OK button and in most cases they will work alright. And some few apps will just absolutely refuse to work. I know for a fact that Uber and Lyft will refuse to work without Google Play services enabled. With uber at least you can visit m.uber.com.

As the person mentioned above, using open source apps as much as you can is a great step in the right direction as they don’t phone home nearly as much. If at all. Make fdroid your new best friend and maybe add the izzyondroid repo to it.

Another category of apps you may have trouble with is mobile banking. I used to have a Neo bank called Chime, and their app worked fine without Google Play services, but I wanted to not need the Aurora store anymore, and I could not transfer between accounts with the Chime website, and so I ended up switching banks entirely.

You definitely don’t want the ETFs such as GLD or the miners because those are shares and you don’t actually physically own them. So you’re going to want the physical or goldbacks.

Edit: With the gold, if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. With Monero, you need to have your own wallet with your private keys, because again, if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.

Having anything be for benefit of means that it can be revoked as it’s nothing more than an IOU with conditional redemption.

Fiat cost average into Monero and gold. I know a lot of people would say Bitcoin. But if you buy Bitcoin, then the government is going to know that you have it. Whereas if you buy Monero, the government is not going to know you have it.

Also, start participating in the Monero circular economy by buying and selling goods and services on XMRBazaar.com denominated in Monero

Here is my store, for example. https://xmrbazaar.com/user/AuroraGeneralStore/

For gold, you might want to have a look at goldbacks since they go down to one thousandth of an ounce of gold and can be used as a transactional currency.

Ah, okay. I think I heard about it at an earlier point where it was only using your current email.

Okay, I’m sorry, but that’s just kind of ironic.

Ugh. This fight is never ending. I feel like after a while you just get totally burned out of fighting and have to pass it on to others.

https://delta.chat/en/

⚡️ Sign up to secure fast chatmail servers or use classic e-mail servers

That’s my understanding as well. It’s to keep people like the media from being able to determine upcoming functionality by looking at code snippets. So the development would go on in secret, and then once per year, all the final code would be pushed to AOSP. However, OP does make a good point because if you have to examine all the final code at once, you might miss something that would be privacy detrimental.

I use signal myself but I also use simple X. I can’t use delta chat because I use proton for my email and therefore can’t use delta.

Retoswap.com. You download the software similar to Bisq and you can transfer Fiat into Monero. Just this month it’s had its first five million dollar month. And so it’s increasing all the time.

I don’t know much about atomic releases. Is that in any way similar to immutable distros such as NixOS? If so, and you ran mid in that way, it ought to be damn near impossible to break.