[porcaddio]

As for security what things could I do to keep my laptop secure if anyone was to attempt to go through it

Encrypt your data.

If the edition supports It (Pro, Enterprise, and Education), you can use BitLocker- which Is native to the said editions. If not, VeraCrypt does the job extremely well.

heck, I didn't know about Veracrypt...thanks, dude!

[mothered]

As for security what things could I do to keep my laptop secure if anyone was to attempt to go through it

Encrypt your data.

If the edition supports It (Pro, Enterprise, and Education), you can use BitLocker- which Is native to the said editions. If not, VeraCrypt does the job extremely well.

heck, I didn't know about Veracrypt...thanks, dude!

You're welcome.

It's an excellent form of encryption, you will not be disappointed.

[samrib]

format c: and use Linux, not ubuntu please!!

[ahti]

Some users above me mentioned encryption on physical drives, but if you want to go anonymous online you can start by using a VPN. I would recommend ExpressVPN as it has a strict no logs policy that is quite literally impossible for the company to break. And that is due to all of their servers running in RAM disk mode, which immediately destructs any data on the RAM. So if you make a search while connected to an ExpressVPN server in Canada, a few seconds later no one would ever know you made a search while connected to that server, or where even connected in the first place.

Also make sure you aren't using any sketchy browsers. Those sketchy browsers being Chrome, Opera, and I would now even consider Firefox to be sketchy. You should go for a browser that's open source or modified. My main browser is currently Ungoogled Chromium. You might have heard of Chromium, but Ungoogled Chromium does things a bit differently. They're both open source, but Chromium still has a lot of Google features inside of it. While Ungoogled Chromium has every single Google feature stripped from it. I don't even think you can sign into a gmail account in the browser, although I've never actually tried to and I don't plan on even attempting it anyway.

I'll include some closing tips down here that you can read more about if you want.

• Don't visit sketchy sites.
  
• Don't download anything sketchy.
  
• Make sure you have some sort of tracker blocker installed like Privacy Badger installed on your browser of choice.
  
• Update your passwords regularly, and make sure each account you have has a unique password. That's going to be pretty difficult to do without a password manager. I would recommend using Bitwarden. You can manage all of your accounts quite easily and generate very strong passwords with it as well.
  
• Don't have unecessary programs installed, and especially running in the background. Just check your Task Manager to see if there's anything that shouldn't be running in there. If you find something that's using lots of CPU, Disk, or Internet you should disable it and probably uninstall it.
  
• Another way to make sure none of your programs are sending data back to the mothership is by using Glasswire. I've used it in the past and I guarantee you it'll work. It does have some premium features but @'Rick_Sanchez' uploaded a cracked version here. The crack is safe if you're wondering.
  

I might have forgotten something but that's all I could remember off the top of my head. If you want to go even further with privacy you could check out r/privacy. But there are a lot of hardcore privacy redditors there so just be warned.

Hopefully all of that information was useful to you in some way.

Almost all VPN providers actually log, when they say they dont. Several busts have revealed that.
Chrome or Mozilla just fits fine, just config WebRTC to spoof or disabled, you can use free addons which change useragent and fingerprints to, and use dns like google. Or use TOR + vpn. Some can use Genesis antidetect browser and buy fingerprints from them: https://genesis.market
VeraCrypt is perfect, and a long complex password is needed to.

There are so much things that people offer, when actually they arent needed. Atleast not for SE work.
People in this forum should do way more then to secure theyr PC, look at members and posts, people share their contact details, countries, locations, even they make username with their real name and birth year. I guarantee most members here use their own email to register and dont ever use any vpn to browse.

And I think a tip "not to browse sketchy sites" doesnt come as handy, as there are drive-by exploits used on real webpages . I know for a fact there are several public and private 0day exploits on few biggest ecommerce systems, which provide admin and root access.

[joaosilvam13]

is it better to use vpn or proxys?

[Pruebita1]

Proxy is more secure than vpn