BTFoundation

As someone that only recently began using more secure internet practices is there anything that I can do about the profile that Google etc have already build on me?

This is really good information. I am deeply concerned about the growing prevalence of echo chambers.

Now I am forced to burn stacks of money for heating my house. Is this what success feels like?

Edit: You answered my first question already, so feel free to ignore it.

I just recently started getting serious about privacy and just started using DuckDuckGo.

First, thank you for your hard work!

I have three questions:

What is your advertisement policy? I've noticed that when I search on DuckDuckGo the first response is an ad (just like Google). But without tracking our searches how do you incentivize advertisers to advertise with you? (i.e. when they aren't going to be able to target people based on past searches). Is it purely tied to what I searched for in that given instance?

My second question is multipart:

What browser do you recommend and are adblockers safe to use? I installed TOR and I use it fairly frequently. But it's rather slow. I was looking around and from what I can tell (I'm not real techy) Firefox is pretty good and that's what I've been using. I know that in general you should stay away from addons, but just how dangerous would using an adblocker be?

Three:

Just how necessary is a VPN? I'm on a budget so I can't afford to use a paid service and I'm hesitant to use a free one. If I use DuckDuckGo on Firefox for my normal searches and use DuckDuckGo on TOR for anything more sensitive do I need a VPN? (note: I'm truly not doing anything illegal. I'm philosophically interested in privacy. What I am researching shouldn't be monitored on principle.

Thank you so much!

This is the best answer. Short, to the point, no explanations/caveats/exceptions.