VM a workstation is good. Better, use a VPN (PIA, NORD, etc.), duckduckgo is a non-caching secure search engine with browser plugins for internet exploder, Firefox, giggle crime....
Unless they are compromised by external actors or internal (pgp/zimmerman comes to mind)the VPN route is pretty good-ish. There is some bandwidth overhead (much like TOR), but if searches are not graphics intensive....
KYPD
yeah I’m probably gonna have to settle on a VM- I’m not too familiar with VPN’s though- will have to look into those-
My main problem with searching the internet though is going on what looks legit- like say tractor supply site, and getting immediately redirected to nefarious site- That was happening quite a bit not so long ago- i finally got fed up with windows and installed linux in a dual boot scenario, and now just use linux as main os as it’s more secure- but I still need to do a little online work in windows os from time to time- plus, like i said, the gaming-