Advise on the benefit of a firewalled router

[Notconnected]

Hello everyone, am new here, have lots of questions.
I currently can only access the internet over my mobile phone
using it as a hotspot to wirelessly connect my laptop to the internet.
So given my ISP can see everything I do online, is there any point
in setting up an Opnsense box, connecting my laptop to it, and connecting the wan port to my phone.
What protection or security will this provide me with, or as I suspect my ISP will still have the same look into my browsing and online life.
I hope someone will take the time to explan what can and can not be gained from using a firewalled router between my laptop and my mobile phone.

Thanks in advance

 

[Notconnected]

Anyone care to comment, thanks.

 

[dave14305]

You don’t use a firewall to prevent snooping by the ISP. You use a firewall to keep unwanted traffic entering or exiting your network. You encrypt traffic if you want privacy from snooping.

If your mobile phone is your only connection, what security does it offer today? I’ve never relied on a mobile phone as a hotspot. Can your internet addresses be pinged? Are they CGNAT addresses? Any IPv6?

 

[Notconnected]

You don’t use a firewall to prevent snooping by the ISP. You use a firewall to keep unwanted traffic entering or exiting your network. You encrypt traffic if you want privacy from snooping.

If your mobile phone is your only connection, what security does it offer today? I’ve never relied on a mobile phone as a hotspot. Can your internet addresses be pinged? Are they CGNAT addresses? Any IPv6?

Thank you for posting.
I use my mobile phone because they will not provide land line never mind fiber where I am
out in the country.firewall.
I do not use my mobile phone for browsing, only to connect my laptop to the internet via my router /
I have Opnsense set up to use quad9 for DNS resolution via unbound.
What protection will this give me, will my ISP still see all my online browsing activity,
or will the connection from my firewall to quad9 circumvent my ISP's snooping.

UPDATE, I forgot to mention I use a managed switch before the router / firewall,
it can do VLAN's.
My main concern is my ISP's spying, nothing to hide, but am not happy to have someone
snooping around, or selling any information they get.

 

[Tech9]

The only way to hide your online activity from your ISP is running a VPN on your computer. In this case you replace the physical ISP (the mobile network operator) with virtual one (the VPN service provider) and the latter can see your activity. Some people trust commercial VPN providers more based on aggressive (often false) advertisement. You don't need this additional OPNSense device. Your computer has firewall, the OS is monitoring for suspicious activity, modern browsers use Safe Browsing.

 

[Notconnected]

The only way to hide your online activity from your ISP is running a VPN on your computer. In this case you replace the physical ISP (the mobile network operator) with virtual one (the VPN service provider) and the latter can see your activity. Some people trust commercial VPN providers more based on aggressive (often false) advertisement. You don't need this additional OPNSense device. Your computer has firewall, the OS is monitoring for suspicious activity, modern browsers use Safe Browsing.

Hi, thanks for posting.
I have a switch before the router so I can connect all my computing devices to it via ethernet, then ethernet cable to router.
I should say I also use a hotspot from the WAN on my router / firewall bridged to my phone, this bridge to my mobile phone is the
only wireless link in the chain.
I use linux on all my computing devices but did not want to set up firewalls on them all, so got a router / firewall.

Would setting up a VPN on the router / firewall be the same as setting up a VPN on all my devices.

 

[Tech9]

If your ultimate goal is to hide your online activity - you can't. Someone will always be able to see what are you doing online regardless of your routers, connections, DNS settings and encryptions.

 

[Notconnected]

If your ultimate goal is to hide your online activity - you can't. Someone will always be able to see what are you doing online regardless of your routers, connections, DNS settings and encryptions.

Well then there is no point in being online and hoping to not be categorised labelled and spied upon.
Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Tech9]

You are in the middle of nowhere, no? Nothing to worry about. You may get some extra adds, eventually. Your bank, phone operator, Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. (long list) combined already know more details about you than your closest relative.

 

[Notconnected]

You are in the middle of nowhere, no? Nothing to worry about. You may get some extra adds, eventually. Your bank, phone operator, Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. (long list) combined already know more details about you than your closest relative.

Thanks.