How best to limit api query to return only the specific user related data - advice please!

You can use policies or the controller to say that they only get THEIR data depending on ctx.state.user I believe. Atelast there is a user object, so if they are authenticating with a JWT Strapi knows which user and you can look that up instead of give back everything.

You can also use populate to give back X data if it’s nested or relationships