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You cannot hide from governments. If they want you badly enough they can track you anywhere. So, don't do anything illegal and expect any VPN to protect you bec
by vinay_ys 3y ago
You cannot hide from governments. If they want you badly enough they can track you anywhere. So, don't do anything illegal and expect any VPN to protect you because paid in cash! Remember, all governments have secret national security laws to surveil all data all the time and almost all governments' (even supposed enemies) secret national security agencies cooperate if they badly want to catch someone.
You cannot hide from advertisers if you use a smartphone with apps. App developers who put ads within their app control the apps behavior completely and hence they can fingerprint your device and track you very well without using IP addresses. And within browsers, they can fingerprint you through many javascript features of the browser. Hiding your source IP does very little for your privacy.
Almost all traffic (apps and websites) are encrypted via TLS (https, for example). So, even if you are on an insecure network, unless your OS's TLS certificate store is compromised, your communications are encrypted and protected against snooping from that insecure network.
Also, even on open wifi networks, today, it is very unlikely that the wifi is running without at least WPA2 encryption. Most modern airports run secure wifi. (But they also monitor all traffic metadata for illegal activities).
So, using a VPN as an exit node is just privacy theatre. VPN exit nodes in faraway countries are useful for bypassing content censorship in your own country, but it works only if the content streaming service cooperates with you.
Remember, all ISPs are heavily regulated by governments and can be asked to mirror specific customer's traffic for analysis. I would be very surprised if they don't proactively do it for all VPN operator nodes by default.
- ballenf 3y agoAre there browser plugins that can "fake" your browser fingerprint somewhat? Like, e.g., only showing OS default fonts installed, or fixing screen dimension info, etc? Or would this require forking a browser's code? Maybe futile, but I'd still consider using it.
- bananapub 3y agoyes, and it's one of the things the Tor browser does to make fingerprinting harder.
- ballenf 3y agoBut can it be down with an extension to Chrome/Safari/"normal" Firefox?
- ipaddr 3y agoyes
- seaal 3y agoLibreWolf has pretty good defaults for anti-fingerprinting if you just want something that is setup and works. https://librewolf.net/docs/features/ https://librewolf.net/docs/features/
- Conting 3y agoThe Firefox extension "Fingerprint Shield" will show you when a canvas is generated in your browser. You can try it out on Best Buy. https://archive.ph/ZjnwY https://archive.ph/ZjnwY
- armoredkitten 3y agoFirefox has an experimental fingerprinting protection option built in, which you can enable with a flag: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...
- Bu9818 3y agoTor Browser and Mullvad Browser are your best options, but they aren't browser plugins. Some of their protection is implemented with browser patches.
- whimsicalism 3y ago> You cannot hide from governments. Plenty of people have and I would rather they have to spend a Tor 0day amount of cash to do it than to do it trivially. > You cannot hide from advertisers if you use a smartphone with apps. App developers who put ads within their app control the apps behavior completely and hence they can fingerprint your device and track you very well without using IP addresses. And within browsers, they can fingerprint you through many javascript features of the browser. Hiding your source IP does very little for your privacy. Sure, if you have sketchy apps, but Apple has both legal enforcement and approval of apps. > So, using a VPN as an exit node is just privacy theatre. VPN exit nodes in faraway countries are useful for bypassing content censorship in your own country, but it works only if the content streaming service cooperates with you. ...? They can't trace where your requests came from....
- vinay_ys 3y agohttps://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zero-click-zero-day-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/ https://citizenlab.ca/2023/09/blastpass-nso-group-iphone-zer... 'nuf said!