Absolutely. No one should use the Internet in any manner that relies on them being completely anonymous and untraceable, because if your adversary has enough resources and motivation, you can be found. We can, however, make it non-trivial for basic tracking and dossier-building, which is a reasonable goal.JackBlack wrote:I have many settings tweaked to make my fingerprint less unique. You seem to have yours as well, some overlap with mine, but in the end it kind of looks like voodoo tricks that, although partially effective, probably ends in a false sense of anonymity.
If a single IP address is used, or reused, by many different users, then the info collected over time will vary widely, eventually approaching randomness. Today, a 40-yr-old man; next month, a 14-yr-old girl. Etc. Consider a university in which 5000 students share one WAN-facing IP. It's easy to know that the request came from the university, but not possible to know by which student unless the admin is corrupt or incompetent. (Both are possible, of course.)JackBlack wrote: I think we're still doomed to be almost unique because of our IP address even if it's dynamic.
Agree on Tor, and for other issues too -- it's not so private as one is lead to believe. And, of course, Govs and others can place Tor nodes and do traffic analysis. However, you can use foreign proxies, should you wish. I know one other Mod here who has several proxies, on both sides of the Atlantic. And Giorgio surely has many proxies, because, e. g., one issue involved a site that was accessible only to UK users -- meaning, those with a UK IP. Can't diagnose the issue without the proxy. So however much time, effort, and money you're willing to spend...JackBlack wrote:The only way would be to proxify our butt using things such as Tor, but it's just too uncomfortable to do this all the time. So we end up having our daily traffic reveal our IP and thus, our approximate location
IP geolocation per se can be a pretty rough estimate. I've had sites ID me (same IP) as being in half a dozen different cities, with the distance between the two most distant being a good 60 miles (100 km) or so. It depends on your ISP, and how narrowly they restrict a given octet, and how much they reveal to others.
Using my neighbor's connection (different ISP) places it in a city 150 miles away. But agree that population density affects how many possible browsers could have the same fingerprint. The radius described above, on my own, would be in the seven-figure population range. In Wyoming, probably not.
Critical is to disable geo.enabled in about:config, which I'm sure you've already done, and *never to allow scripting from google.com*, which uses nearby known points to place you, sometimes as closely as 100m.
True. So, we vary fingerprints.JackBlack wrote: and thus, place us within quite a small group of users sharing our fingerprint, as non-unique as it is country or world wide.
No miracles here. But one can spread disinformation when sites require information. I have several Yahoo mail accounts, not counting disposable, and one thinks I'm a young woman living 15 miles away, and the others... you get the picture.JackBlack wrote:Hint: I'd be glad to be wrong and that you have some miraculous solution, but aside from living in a 10 millions people city... :p
Doesn't work when you buy stuff online, of course, because as soon as someone knows your name and address, game over. So either don't shop online, or don't be too paranoid about it. Or use one specific e-mail and ISP for online shopping and banking, and another for all else. ... balance how much this is worth to you in inconvenience vs. how valuable is the personal info. I lead a dull, boring life, , and never see the "targeted ads", but resent the tracking on principle.
If they ever revealed anything without being first served a subpoena, warrant, or other Court order, my lawyer would jump on that, and we could both retire -- I *hope*.JackBlack wrote:(And then your ISP still knows everything that's not proxified, but that's another story...)
They can't read your SSL/TLS-encrypted connection traffic, unless they're extremely unethical (MITM with false certs, etc.). They know what IP you are visiting, of course, but not the contents. IMHO, the whole Net should use secure connections, as the improvements in tech render the increase in overhead more and more trivial.
Yes. It's called a profile. Create as many as you like. Use your must-have add-ons (NoScript grows in popularity; hence, not as much of a GUID as when the user pop was small), but add some non-essential ones, even ones you don't care about, and make the mix different for each. Vary which profile you use. Combine that with changing useragent. You'd have to update each one for each Fx or add-on update, or use a Synch feature, but make sure the Synch didn't make the add-ons the same in every profile. Probably have to end up writing your own batch script or something. But personally, I don't care to go to that much trouble.JackBlack wrote:I have one solution though: Have a fingerprint switcher. Useragent is not enough...is there such a thing as a fingerprint switcher?
Faking OS may break some pages, such as coding for Mac vs. Windows, and so may faking a browser, such as coding for IE vs (everyone else, LOL).JackBlack wrote: The ideal one would be able to allow Javascript but provide fake system and browser variables.
There's a limit. Also, I could change my language pref to en-UK, but the IP is US no matter what. So you'd need a UK proxy. Hmm... Australia?
But then, one would have to remember to write in that dialect. Not easy... Just exactly what is it you're hiding? WAIT! *Don't* tell me!
The latter two, exactly.JackBlack wrote:I'm guessing you use some kind of other way to filter ads, such as Privoxy or hosts file or even a white list based approach such as RequestPolicy?Tom T. wrote:I never see ads anyway (ask me how, should you like)
I find most of them annoying and distracting, which is their goal. In a world with a superfluity of stimuli bombarding us constantly, they must try ever harder to get our attention. I've even used "No Style" on some hard-to-read web sites.JackBlack wrote:On a side note I have nothing against most ads, my issue is that ads mean tracking. I wouldn't have blocked them if they hadn't been attempting to mark me like a cow :p
Glad to hear that. I had a higher opinion than that of Wladimir's astuteness, so thanks for confirming.JackBlack wrote:Yeah... I double checked and it appears that I've been misled and ABP most likely sends DNT for every request. The rule contains specifics about images but it's a workaround for backward compatibility.Tom T. wrote:Surprised that ABP would limit its use