- Use Firefox, Waterfox, Brave, or Opera. Never Chrome.
I disagree with the recommendation of Opera as it's closed-source, so we have to trust that they're upholding their privacy policy since the code can't be vetted.
For the same reason, try keeping any browser extensions, or just software in general that you use, open-source (Still look it up and check if it's private, since open-source doesn't guarantee it is, only that you can verify whether it is). Also make sure it's available on Linux if you ever plan on switching to that.
If you aren't crazy about privacy, something chromium-based like Brave or Ungoogled Chromium is fine, otherwise Firefox or a derivative like Waterfox or Librefox is better as they can be much more private since there's more settings for that (which is why Tor browser is based on Firefox). For Firefox I'd recommend the
arkenfox config for privacy (please read it's
wiki first because there's necessary information for how to install, and more importantly modifying the config, which you will do especially in the beginning.)
Storage drives in your computer and elsewhere being dug into is a risk if you ctb (or get caught trying to ctb). Unless a drive is wiped (not a quick format, but actually overwriting all the data with zeroes or random data, which takes hours per TB on hard drives) or encrypted, all it's data can be seen, including things you deleted (using file recovery software). If you have any old computers, external drives, usb drives, sd cards, phones, game consoles, etc that currently/previously had data you don't want dug through, keep this in mind. If anything sensitive is on cloud storage like Google Drive, replace it with an encrypted archive so they can't see it either. Use a
strong password on whatever you encrypt so it can't be brute-forced.
Edit: For people concerned about exif data, metadata can also be present on video/audio files, word documents, etc.