Damn… I guess the next idea is going offline for good
no shit
I use VPN because of the ISP and the network, not to become anonymous to the websites I visit.
Ultimately being truly anonymous on the internet is pretty hard, and thus VPNs are mostly helpful for getting around region blocks for streaming services, not for obtaining more privacy.
I disagree.
There seems to constantly be two sides of the privacy discussion with public VPN options and they’re both wrong on their own. It’s correct that using a VPN on its own is not enough to keep you private online, fingerprinting being one example to why. However, not using a VPN but having no identifiable browser fingerprint doesn’t either, since your IP is still a fingerprint too.
I like to give the following analogies:
- Doing only an oil change on your vehicle but no other maintenance won’t keep your vehicle running forever
- Doing all vehicle maintenances except oil changes won’t keep your vehicle running forever
If the goal is to be private, remember that a VPN is only one tool in a very large tool belt.
I think TOR would be more suitable than a VPN
Tor is definitely another option. For my personal use however, I have my entire network covered by a VPN so all outgoing traffic uses it.
I’m sure I could setup Tor to do the same, but I imagine my family and I would get blocked more heavily on sites, as well as get our bank accounts and such flagged or something.
Like many things, it obviously depends on your threat model.
Doesn’t browser with anti-fingerpriting give the same settings to everyone using that browser so they all look like the same person?
Yes and I think that’s kinda dumb. It’s never going to be possible to have everyone look the same. I would go the other route. Randomize everything everytime so you never leave twice the same fingerprints. That’s way easier and it polutes marketers dabases, which is a double win.
Back in the day there were apps that generated phony web searches to obfuscate your real searches. Seems like there could be tools to mess around and change browser fingerprints periodically. No?
Already done, see: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
When I go to the fingerprint test, a bunch of the values like canvas resolution and timezone are randomized.
…Not everything, though.
It could be done on the browser level (maybe it’s something browsers like LibreWolf do), however, it would break sites that require the fingerprints to be the same for “security reasons” which may or may not be a legitimate claim.
You could say “well, I’m not going to use that particular website then”, but the problem is that there are less and less websites that don’t require these technologies to function properly.
There is a browser extension called Chameleon that will spoof a fair amount of data, but after testing it against one of those fingerprint test sites, it looks like it doesn’t/can’t spoof everything.
