I try to turn off spying apps too —on my PC and phone. The startup windows services junk is ridiculous. Do you have a list or goto site that provides suggestions on these apps and services that can be deleted or stopped?
My bank's website seems to require Chrome or I can't log in, so I use Chrome for that only. My two old desktops won't log in to my bank either, so my phone is the only way. Google Play Services "notifies" me relentlessly (supposedly GPSvcs is forced OFF, so some other Google demon may be making that notification) that "Chrome won't work" if I don't enable GPSvcs. But I don't enable it, and fortunately Chrome works anyway. Not sure what will happen when my bank says my version of Chrome is outdated and once again won't let me log in.
Free Republic works great on my old computers. It's about the only thing that works on the one I'm typing from, an old Windows XP 2002 laptop!