A good VPN (such as Proton, IVPN, … if you can afford it) alongside a good filtering DNS (DoT type like dnsforge or maybe nextDNS ?) is a good way to prevent ISP mass collection of your data, and is pretty good at filtering ads and malware.
Note that the “tracker manager” of Advanced Privacy can’t work with DNS over TLS (DoT).
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ProtonVPN has free option as well from what I know. Limited to 3 countries but still. 
Question is if I can close down the Advanced Privacy with no difficulties to system work :think: This is a nice idea, but at the same time drastically slows down the work of the whole system 
Firstly, i would like to express my great appreciation of the effort that you developers put into these security issues! I noticed AP recently and it didn’t take long to get acquainted to it, and when I realized what it does (tracker controll) i was really pleasantly surprised!
I played with it a little and it did raise some questions:
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Can i really use an external VPN on top of AP? I thought the first post said that AP takes the VPN slot in the system and that the devs are working on the solution. Then somebody later in the thread wrote that it was possible to use both. I find it hard to tell in the actual use, since there is no line that says for instance ‘Active’ or not, next to AP, when another VPN is on.
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Hiding IP with AP does not work for me, because it seem to block all my internet traffic, even for those apps that were not checked in the list of apps you want to hide IP for. What could I be doing wrong? But that is my experience with Tor in general, the internet speed gets really slow and unreliable and that is why I use it very rarely. I do use some VPNs, used Surfshark in the past, nowadays PIA and Calyx’. They seem to work ok.
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I use Viber for keepin in touch with people that are not interested in getting Signal or similar. I noticed that AP blocks 6 trackers, which I of course was very happy for.
But then I compared that with the list of trackers in Viber on the Aurora store’s rapport - there it said that Viber has 7 trackers. And the one that AP missed was called ‘Facebook Ads’. Of course i realize that AP can impossibly catch each and every tracker in use. But I do wonder how I could get around that last one that, being Facebook’s, is especially irritating for me…
But these are minor things, and i find /e/ despite those a wonderful creation! So I’d like to again express my HUGE thank you to all you developers!
AP takes the VPN slot only for the “Hide my IP” function (if activated), not for “Fake my location” and not for “Trackers Blockers”. Your choice if You use all of them or just some of them or AP at all.
If you do not use “Hide my IP” You should be able to use the VPN slot of the system for whatever other app or service that You like.
And Yes, Tor slows it down in general anyways…
see the specific section on “hide my ip”-side effects in the first post
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Thank you for the answer! Short and concise. I appreciate it!
Anyone has any ideas on the last remaining, facebook-tracker?
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The tracker of facebook.net and others are mentioned in this thread, from when Advanced Privacy was quite new.
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Note that while issue #6124 was closed, the actual problem wasn’t fixed yet. My current workaround is to run Tracker Control on top of Advanced Privacy until the team gets around to addressing the problem.
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This might be a good resource for VPN:
I discovered it while looking for options to connect SoftEther VPN clients to. It might be best not to use Tor, at all. There is too much controversy around it for very little benefit.
So i have been using eOS for about half a year now and im very happy with it. But i guess recently the hide my location feature of advanced privacy has been acting up in the sense that when turned off it still hides my real location, no matter how many times i switch between the location settings it will never go to my real one. This is a very big and annoying problem because lots of apps do need this feature to work. The same problem happens to my friend with same phone and same OS. Anyone else having this problem or any idea how to fix this? It also doenst seem possible to fully disable advanced privacy which is to bad…
Thanks
I haven’t read everything there is here about Advanced Privacy and I didn’t find this mentioned here quickly … Advanced Privacy is listed as an App (Settings - Apps - See all … apps - (three dot menu at the top right) - Show system - Advanced Privacy).
Did you already try whether force stopping it would perhaps reset Advanced Privacy’s interruption?
Ye force stop, restart phone, clear cache, clear storage and no way to disable the whole app…
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Hi,
It seems your screenshot only shows the UI of the main screen of app, not the disable option like this?
The App info page gives you the package name at the bottom (foundation.e.advancedprivacy) … Uninstall default apps - #29 by AnotherElk … it seems this has been done before with Advanced Privacy (I didn’t try it myself).
So i manually deleted advanced privacy via adb, restarted phone and cleared all caches of apps using location; still pointing to a ghost position on map. Also in developer options mock location still refers to AP but when clicking on mock options there are none.
Edit; mock locationbug has disappeared and now just shows Nothing. Apps using gps location now all say the cant find location/position not found yet(not the mock location anymore)
Yes.
What I mean is: when I swipe off the location slider my location turn right.
As i said in my first message here; thats indeed how it worked for a good long time, which was very nice feature. But recently it stopped working and since that moment it hasnt been able to get my real location anymore…
Maybe you want to pursue why AP failed in this way for you by Report an issue – this thread started when AP was new and unpredictable, now most find it works a bit better, however personally I never switch on hide my location.
Alternatively, to move on the gps or location problem …
You may have suffered setbacks to location due to a change in the location software which appeared in update to e-1.12.3 described with links here Naturalist (Ornithologist App) gets no location - #19 by marcdw
Looking at the Maps issue specifically you might read an fp4 case a little similar to yours GPS location fails after latest OS update on Fairphone 4
In this post I describe the steps you might now need to take with Maps Installation stuck in recovery mode after easy-installation - #9 by aibd
Difficulties with other apps which depend on location may show up in a search.
Perhaps also check all your location permissions and settings – a useful checklist here Feedback for v1.12.3 - #5 by AnotherElk
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