Hi there, I’m looking to get into self-hosting for privacy reasons and I wanted to ask y’all: how inadvisable is it to utilize an ISP-owned router/modem? I feel like they’re able to track everything I do online with their more than likely integrated spyware.
It’s extremely unlikely that they are going to do any kind of deep traffic inspection in the router/modem itself. Inspecting network traffic is very intensive though and gives very little value since almost all traffic is encrypted/HTTPS today, with all major browsers even showing scare warnings if’s regular unencrypted HTTP. Potentially they could track DNS queries, but you can mitigate this with DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS (For best privacy I would recommend Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls)
And of course, make sure that anything you are self-hosting is encrypted and using proper HTTPS certificates. I would recommend setting up a reverse proxy like Nginx or Traefik that you expose. Then you can route to different internal services over the same port based on hostname. Also make sure you have a good certificate from Letsencrypt
Many German providers have hardcoded DNS servers in their rental routers though and they block everything from torrent directories to iptv sites.
The only thing they can realistically harcode is the DNS server their router’s DHCP provides.
Just configure devices to not use that setting, also use DoH or DoT (which you should do anyway, not just to circumvent your router’s settings).
I haven’t used such a router in decades, I just know from doing IT support at friends homes. These people have no clue how to get around these DNS filters.