What are /r/anonymity's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

There is a dearth of anonymous payment options. I'm wondering if someone could develop an anonymous crypto like monero but that would also be stable that could be used as some sort of financial VPN instead of apps like CashApp, Venmo and so on.

So the idea is that it would be connected to your credit card but the only thing the bank would see is buying or selling crypto and would not have data as to the actual nature of the transaction.

I know there's privacy.com but browsing their site I had a hard time figuring out how it works and how they protect your privacy, so opinions on this or other services I don't know about would be much appreciated.

Furthermore, is there a way such a method could be used to make purchases at stores and online services so that the use of the service would not be required by the merchant and anonymity was still preserved for the buyer.

Any thoughts?

You can buy into NordVPN with crypto anonymously without much hassle. I don't agree at all going to a physical store in this heavily surveillance world is more anonymous. You can purchase shit on Amazon with gift card or not without them having a CC for you on file. Last I checked that is required to establish an account.
You can sure pay for stuff with gift cards on Amazon account. But shipment is the rub NOT what you pay with. Unless you are going to set up an anonymous receiving address at least.
Again as far as I know you can't set up Amazon account without a CC than since 911 in the US is bound to a true name.
I don't know why anyone would try to be anonymous with an online over the nternet product by going into a surveilled physical location to do so.

You're better off using the VPN providers DNS provider if being anonymous is your goal imo.

It's less people with your data. If you use a secure DNS provider they're going to know what websites your trying to resolve and then your VPN provider is going to know what websites your visiting. That's two different people with your data.

My use case for VPN isn't really anonymity, I work in the middle east and alot of countries out here block random websites and voip calls. ExpressVPN works for that.

Best practice is to use your VPN providers DNS server. Depending on your device configuration, your DNS traffic could go out unencrypted to cloudfare and then once the DNS request has been resolved it will route the web traffic through your VPN.

Keep in mind that once your web traffic leaves your VPN provider's network it is no longer encrypted.

If you do a search you'll be able to see how your VPN provider handles DNS, I personally use ExpressVPN.

Wasn't Express VPN bought out by a company with a shady past?
I'm fairly new to this internet privacy and security and there's just way too much info out there but I'm trying. Some swear by PIA but I've also heard they were bought out by the same company that recently bought out Express. Many seem to speak highly of Mullvad but others say them using Wireguard isn't secure. etc etc.

Would you be defaulting to use the VPN's DNS server if you select not to use a "secure DNS"?

Well, a VPN is likely to be your best choice. Get any no-logs VPN (none of the others are worth it) that gives you DNS leak protection and decent encryption.

Tbh, I know that both and PIA are good for this, and both have exit nodes/endpoints in major US states and several in the UK with 85+% speed. If you live anywhere else, good luck finding something that fits the bill and please shout the name out.