If you use any Google products, you're being spied on.  You are the product to be sold to advertisers.  You should see what Androids and even Chromebooks are sending home.  The most effective product I've found to block this is uBlock Origin, and very soon, that will stop working in Chrome because Google is going to remove the API it uses.  Too effective I suppose.

VPNs do almost nothing to anonymize you.  They just conceal an IP address which is pretty much meaningless.  Chrome is fingerprinted via other mechanisms which survive a VPN trip, just like they survive you traveling across the country.  Remember that all a VPN does is put you in another place electronically rather than physically.  They have nearly no value today, other than pirating things or gaining access to country-restricted content.

To me, ad blocking is much more about the amount of junk on pages, battery life, and CPU usage.  I've never clicked on an ad in my life, and expect I never will.  I don't want to see them, or wait for them to load.  I don't want them in the way of real content.

Edited June 25 by Carlos

Sorry, but I think yall over reacting to this. All my years of pc, chrome book, Androids I have never had a virus or a problem other than the units eventually dying.

Nobody here is talking about viruses.  Are you in the wrong thread?

I said other problems also. Just included virus. 

What does that have to do with privacy, security, and advertising?

It doesn't bother me for someone using my internet for advertising. I don't go on line anywhere I am ashamsed of. Only issuse I have had with security is Debit Cards and that was not because of being on line. 

I'm happy to show you where I've been online, including my favorite porn sites.  I'm just not happy at all when I see ads.  And others may have different standards of privacy, which you should acknowledge is just their choice.  Personally I don't care all that much about the ad data sharing, but think people should be aware and make their own choices.  I just don't want to see the ads or have them sent over my sometimes limited bandwidth.

I don't see a lot of adds. Now if I go on a forum and not be signed in I see them. 

I down loaded Brave from the Play store a few months ago on my phone, tablet and Chromebook and it block all adds and trackers.

Denny 

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