Yep. For example, if your ISP is in the advertising business, I would definitely use a VPN, even after opting out w/ the ISP/cellular provider. IMO a lot of times when you opt out, it doesn’t mean they stop collecting information, it means they paused using that information for ad targeting.

ex: https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/customer-proprietary-network-information

Here are some things you can do, roughly ranked:

• Use a password manager
• Assume anything you post/do online/financially can and will be used to build an advertising profile on you/train AI/be shared with government authorities
• Disable ad personalization/history/sharing of information via privacy settings of mobile phone, mobile apps, Google, Facebook, banks, credit cards, ISP, cellular service, everything
• Turn off third-party cookies.
• Use an ad-blocker on desktop and mobile. They also help prevent a lot of tracking.
• Don’t use Chrome. Consider Firefox/Brave/whatever else
• Avoid using ad-supported services/companies. Consider using paid alternatives. This means using alternatives to Google Search, GMail, Facebook for photos, etc etc.
• Use a profile deleting service like https://monitor.mozilla.org/
• Different browser profiles: general use, Facebook, personal (GMail / Google Docs), and maybe more
• Use a VPN w/ secured DNS
• Many Google accounts: one for general, YouTube, Google Docs/personal, and maybe more
• Use a different email address to sign up for every account. I use StartMail’s aliases
• Don’t use your personal phone number for most things (finance/healthcare excepted). Get another number via a call and SMS forwarding service

Look for another job.

Companies like that are very unlikely to change their view that engineering’s quality and sustainability practices are a perpetual waste of money.

That, and product doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they’re okay with making engineering also suffer for it.

Nor do they care in practice about the engineers getting burned out.

After you leave, when you glance back at the company at any time for the next 5+ years, you will see that they have learned pretty much nothing.

I’ve been burned out once, and I’ll never let it happen to me again, or anyone I work with. It’s like depression; it’s an indescribable experience.

Here’s one self-test to measure how burned out you are: https://www.peoplestorming.com/burnout-assessment.

• Katana - quiet, and meant as a weapon against humans
• Night vision goggles - can take advantage of the cover of night
• Water purifier - greatly simplifies one human necessity
• Body armor - will put it on whenever there’s a risk

None of these are common household items, whereas some of the items on the list are, and thus, scavenged easily enough.