zdnet[.]com/article/obsessed-with-privacy-keep-tails-on-a-usb-drive-and-secure-most-any-computer/
neowin[.]net/news/privacy-oriented-tails-512-comes-with-persistent-storage-improvements/
TL;DR -- most everything on today's GOTD offer/download page is BS. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
THE biggest threat to your privacy is your Android phone. You can mitigate that like the bad guys on TV by using a burner [prepaid] phone using false ID info when necessary [& possible]. The 2nd big threat is browsing the web using most web browsers. For privacy, if you can put up with the lag -- going through anonymous proxies takes time -- use the TOR browser, or at least the browsers from Duck Duck Go, or failing that, Brave. If you must use Chrome, Edge, Opera etc., dig into the settings -- there's loads of stuff to turn off -- and use privacy or incognito mode.
When it comes to your PC / laptop, Windows tracks stuff -- not necessarily to send to Microsoft, but that's the way it works. You can control what data gets sent to a large extent, and some of the anonymized stuff, like data on Windows Update crashes, benefits us all. That said, there's no reason you have to give Microsoft legitimate info regarding your ID if/when you set up an account. If you're worried that Microsoft somehow tracks what you did yesterday, use a fake ID and your rep stays snow white pure. You can of course run Windows without tying it to any account, or maybe better yet, run the Enterprise version of Windows unactivated -- it won't even attempt to sign in, ever.
Another problem is that, no matter what you do short of restoring an image backup, that copy of Windows will store your history. It's more than just the limited history that apps like Privacy Protector for Windows 11 claim to delete. One solution is to run VMs... you can put the VHD with a copy of Windows on a micro SD card that you can hide pretty much anywhere, or easily destroy if necessary. And/or you can run a VM using Veracrypt -- it has a feature where you can nest a hidden, encrypted VHD inside another encrypted VHD. Use one password and the copy of Windows in the outer VHD will run -- use another password and you can run the hidden copy. It's not impossible for someone to find that hidden copy of Windows, but it's very close.
Or you can avoid that and run Linux, and if you want to double down on privacy, run Tails.
Tails is recommended by Edward Snowden, computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower, and it sends all your internet traffic over the Tor network, which is an encrypted protocol for anonymous communication. When you close the Tails operating system, all traces of everything you did evaporate.