Advise on the benefit of a firewalled router

[NXIL]

I think it is normal, switch connected to router, router to internet, it sure would not work the other way around.

Ah, this is a frame of reference thing. You wrote

Notconnected said:

I have a switch before the router

For me (USA English, don't hold it against me!) the modem is first, then comes the router, then lastly the switch.

Modem >> router >> switch.

When you say "switch is before router", to me that sounds like

Modem >> switch >> router.

 

[NXIL]

There is no "anonymity" when connected to Internet.

Tech9 is correct. If you attract attention on the internet, one thing that is easy to do is take a fingerprint of your PC:

Am I Unique ?

Check if your browser has a unique fingerprint, how identifiable you are on the Internet

amiunique.org

on the Internet​

Help us investigate the diversity of web browsers​

This website aims at studying the diversity of browser fingerprints and providing developers with data to help them design good defenses. Contribute to the efforts by viewing your own browser fingerprint or consult the current statistics of data provided by users around the world! If you click on this button.

I just ran mine:

Yes! You are unique among the 3,986,434 fingerprints in our entire dataset.

Meaning if I attracted attention, right now there are no other PCs out there with my configuration (just a standard Windows 10 machine, nothing at all unusual or fancy.)

And it's not just on line: this is from NY Times a few days ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/opinion/china-surveillance-cameras.html?searchResultPosition=1

"Can We See Our Future in China's Cameras?"

I know they are pretty common in London, too, and of course lots of other places.

I heard some surprising refrains on my recent travels through China. “Leave your bags here,” a Chinese acquaintance or tour guide would suggest when I ducked off the streets into a public bathroom. “Don’t worry,” they’d say and shrug when I temporarily lost sight of my young son in the crowds.

The explanation always followed: “Nobody will do anything,” they’d say knowingly. Or: “There’s no crime.” And then, always: “There are so many cameras!”

The fact that they are so effective most likely means there's really good facial recognition software too. Incidentally, everyone has a different walk. It's not just faces, they can also track your walk/gait/stride and rhythm and ID you that way.

Yes, cameras can recognize individuals based on their unique walking patterns, a technology known as gait recognition. This method analyzes how a person walks, creating a "gait signature" that can be used for identification, even when faces are obscured.

There was a crash course on the invasive reality of a functionally cash-free society: physical credit cards refused and verge-of-extinct paper bills spurned. I had to do the thing I’d hoped to avoid: link a credit card to WeChat. That behemoth Chinese “super app” offers everything from banking to municipal services to social media to shopping, and is required to share data with the Chinese authorities. (Elon Musk, by the way, reportedly wants to turn his own app, X, into an invasive offering modeled after WeChat.) Having resigned myself to all-virtual payments, I knew I was corralled like everyone else into unbroken visibility, unable to spend a single yuan or wander down a forgotten side street without being tracked and recorded.

Oh: your TV watching is now tracked. Vizio TV company makes more money selling info on people who watch Vizio TVs than they do selling Vizio TVs.

Vizio makes more money from its advertising and data collection business than from selling TVs. Vizio's "Platform Plus" segment, which includes advertising and viewer data, generates more than double the gross profit compared to its TV sales segment.

Also, your car tracks you, and for a few years GM at least was selling you out, for cash.

et cetera.

 

[Notconnected]

Tech9 is correct. If you attract attention on the internet, one thing that is easy to do is take a fingerprint of your PC:

Am I Unique ?

Check if your browser has a unique fingerprint, how identifiable you are on the Internet

amiunique.org

on the Internet​

Help us investigate the diversity of web browsers​

This website aims at studying the diversity of browser fingerprints and providing developers with data to help them design good defenses. Contribute to the efforts by viewing your own browser fingerprint or consult the current statistics of data provided by users around the world! If you click on this button.

I just ran mine:



Meaning if I attracted attention, right now there are no other PCs out there with my configuration (just a standard Windows 10 machine, nothing at all unusual or fancy.)

And it's not just on line: this is from NY Times a few days ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/opinion/china-surveillance-cameras.html?searchResultPosition=1

"Can We See Our Future in China's Cameras?"

I know they are pretty common in London, too, and of course lots of other places.



The fact that they are so effective most likely means there's really good facial recognition software too. Incidentally, everyone has a different walk. It's not just faces, they can also track your walk/gait/stride and rhythm and ID you that way.



Oh: your TV watching is now tracked. Vizio TV company makes more money selling info on people who watch Vizio TVs than they do selling Vizio TVs.


Also, your car tracks you, and for a few years GM at least was selling you out, for cash.

et cetera.

Tails, Whonix, no bank, no phone in my name, old vehicles with no tracking, old tv with no tracking, unconventionsal computing devices too, guess I have a lot more to work on, the inisible suit for one. I would love to go off grid, but it costs too much.

 

[Notconnected]

In this case you have to give up all the services from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, etc.; stop using online stores like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Target, etc.; close all bank accounts, mortgages, car leases, never use toll roads, etc.; discontinue all streaming services accounts, online subscriptions, cell phone plans, etc.; switch to paper bills only to PO box or better go off grid completely; go in public with shades and fake beard so surveillance cameras don't recognize you. I'm sure someone else will add more privacy ideas.

You have to find the balance between levels of privacy and convenience.

Yep, its just the amount of access big corporations and government and such have into our lives, its unreal, at some point we will be non stop receiving correction warnings for speaking wrong, looking wrong, acting wrong, going out of our area, its crazy what this world has come to.

 

[Tech9]

As always you have to weight pros and cons. This is the price of technological advancement. Some say the happiest people on Earth is a tribe in Amazon basin. They live in symbiosis with nature. Average life expectancy 30-40 years... if lucky.