But do they actually work with US carriers (VoLTE)?

Don’t buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the “tech world” for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway…

You got some pretty decent responses already but hopefully I add some useful information. You don’t have to study computer science theory at all to be private. You don’t even have to learn how to code, let alone to develop software. And I say this as someone who learned how to code in high school and took some CS courses in college as well as the required calculus courses. It is simply overkill and frankly you are doing yourself a disservice if you are focusing on that stuff if your sole priority is to be private digitally. Maybe it could eventually be useful to learn some bash or Python/Ruby/Lua/JS scripting but you sure as hell do not have to start with learning C.

If you just want to have some privacy in general you can start with dealing with some of the worst offenders, but really the best thing to do is to threat model first. What that means is identifying what/who you are concerned about. Who is really your opposition? Is it a specific Big Tech company (maybe your “evil ex” works there), all/most of (American) Big Tech, a certain government (agency) (which government/country), some unhinged and tech savvy stalker, organized crime or an oligarch? Or some combination of the aforementioned? You really need to figure this out first to be effective. Don’t get caught in the trap of trying to defend your privacy against everyone. And remember that privacy and (cyber)security are not the same thing. A Pixel with stock ROM or Chromebook is very secure but not private at all from Google. Conversely, you can have some 10 year old computer with original UEFI firmware running a Linux distribution that hasn’t received security updates in 5 years with the best configuration and practices for privacy from Google. That would be very private from Google but absolutely not secure.

Also avoid the trap of simply adopting what someone else says is “the best”. What is “the best” (assuming that that is even objectively true in that particular case) for one person may not be a good option for someone else at all. What is the best option depends on your threat model and what compromises you need/want to make.

I would recommend checking out Rob Braxman’s channel (on YouTube, or preferably Rumble or Odysee). Not saying he is the end all be all but at the very least he can teach you about the importance of browser isolation. If you want to defend against (American) Big Tech (and/or their partners) you need to understand how their tracking works.

Regarding the Optiplex, I would check out the 3050 micro (it can be Libreboot’ed); they are pretty cheap on eBay. You don’t necessarily have to buy a ThinkPad, there are a lot of options with good Linux compatibility (many business computers optionally came with Linux preinstalled even, not just ThinkPads or Lenovos). Just do not buy an HP (I used to like and own them) as you cannot permanently disable Absolute Persistence on them. Don’t know about more niche brands but you can at least generally with Lenovo and Dell.

If data security isn’t your top priority when it comes to where you put your money, we have nothing to discuss.

This is a very privileged position to take.

then complain that the bank, their parents probably chose for them when they were children

A very uncharitable assumption

Yes of course this problem needs regulation but that won’t happen if all consumers do is complain on useless forums instead of actually putting their money where there mouth is.

You clearly do not understand how regulation is introduced. People moving to banks that already comply with a future/potential regulation does not bring about regulation.

tells the bank you are OK with that. Its not fair but, most institutions prioritize convenience over privacy and security for their customers because that’s what they have shown they want.

This is not how things work at all. How is the bank supposed to know why you switched to another bank or why someone is banking with them.

I’m not sure why people are so offended that they might have to put in some actual effort

It is for the most part not about the effort. You are expressing typical neoliberal “everything can be solved through the market” mentality. If people just put in the effort to buy the right product in the marketplace then everything will be alright.

This will be my final response as we will probably never see eye-to-eye on this and I have better things to do with my time than engaging in pointless arguments. This is not what I joined this privacy community for.

You are making the mistake of assuming that people make a decision about what institution to bank with solely based on what kind of 2FA they provide. In reality, there are many other factors involved. I ended up banking with these institutions for a reason. And I don’t know what the overall situation outside the US, e.g. in Europe, is but I think in the US there are few banks that offer something better than SMS 2FA. Some will force you or invite you to use their special app (which may or may not only work with SafetyNet) instead, which is absolutely not an improvement except perhaps strictly in the security sense. I think there are a few experimenting with FIDO2 hardware security keys but that is the exception. This is a problem that requires regulation not telling random individuals that they just need to git gud at picking a bank.

It’s not owned by Meta and it’s relatively well-known. It’s older than Signal.

Seems like it is only for Europeans (and possibly even excluding non-EU citizens)? I have been using Zoho (free account) for many years (since I got rid of GMail) and while not explicitly privacy-focused they are not a data collection operation like Google/Alphabet or Meta. They make their money through providing paid accounts to businesses (competing with Google Suite). I have been very satisfied with them. They provide very good 2FA options and apps and I also use their WorkDrive (previously Docs) and Notebook.

Outside the US and maybe Japan, iMessage isn’t even a realistic alternative to any other messaging platform or SMS.

My credit union uses SMS for 2FA, so does my (online) bank. What “host of other options are available”? Do tell. But GTFO if you are going to suggest paying my health insurance premium or rural grocery store in Monero or some nonsense like that.

I don’t really understand the logic, but there are plenty of reasons to not be using Google Maps, so I will give my two cents.

I have had the best luck with MagicEarth. I still use Google Maps sometimes when I need to use the most reliable navigation or if MagicEarth can’t find something. When I was driving professionally I found out that sometimes MagicEarth (OSM) got residential addresses right when Google Maps did not but also vice versa. I have used HERE Maps (HereWeGo) in the past and also tried OSMAnd.

I bought an old Sony ereader on eBay a couple years ago but the battery is shot and apparently replacing it requires soldering?! I had been thinking about bringing it to a phone repair shop to get it fixed but now I think that is probably a no-go. Yesterday I researched how repairable the Kobo ereaders are and based on iFixit they seem pretty horrendous, even the newer Clara BW that has an OEM repair guide and official OEM parts available on iFixit (although it is marginally better than the old Aura HD). Now I am thinking I may just forego ereaders altogether. The repair situation with laptops, tablets and phones is bad enough nowadays. I don’t want anything to do with something even worse than that. I would get the PineNote but I am too poor to pay $400 for an ereader.

I have just been using my old iPad (with the low contrast feature enabled for bedtime reading) but obviously that is not great for privacy so I would have to use another device for some books. I could use an old OnePlus that I have but it has an AMOLED display so it’s not great for reading but maybe I can mitigate that with the right software and configuration.

I would just buy paper books but unfortunately that has its privacy issues as well, at least in my case. If one is in a shared living situation it can hard be to keep private what you are reading if other people are nosy. And even just buying paper books anonymously can be impossible if you cannot buy what you want to read with cash at a brick and mortar store. I have no idea how you anonymously order books online (and I am not talking about some dark web marketplace that accepts Monero and has 10 books). It is probably possible if you have enough money to throw at the problem, which I don’t.