It's crazy what we need to do these days just to surf the web!

I do this:

VPN on at all times

Firefox as the main browser

Firefox enhanced tracking protection set to Strict

Firefox containers enabled to isolate specific sites when I do want to log into them (Google...)

Everything set to be deleted (cookies, cache etc) when I close Firefox

Allowed cookies for a handful of sites I want to keep being logged into

DuckDuckGo as the main search

uBlock Origin on with default blocklists. I really love the "element picker" feature which allows me to remove annoying elements