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Browser Fingerprinting And Why VPNs Won’t Make You Anonymous (hackaday.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/privacy@programming.dev
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Amidst the glossy marketing for VPN services, it can be tempting to believe that the moment you flick on the VPN connection you can browse the internet with full privacy. Unfortunately this is quite far from the truth, as interacting with internet services like websites leaves a significant fingerprint. In a study by [RTINGS.com] this browser fingerprinting was investigated in detail, showing just how easy it is to uniquely identify a visitor across the 83 laptops used in the study.

As summarized in the related video (also embedded below), the start of the study involved the Am I Unique? website which provides you with an overview of your browser fingerprint. With over 4.5 million fingerprints in their database as of writing, even using Edge on Windows 10 marks you as unique, which is telling.

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[–] 24 points 10 months ago

Seems like a bit of an over-simplification. I'm using VPN to stop my ISP snooping and manipulating my web traffic. And being unique in this sense doesn't de-anonymize you.

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    [–] 9 points 10 months ago

    Yes! You are unique among the 4553814 fingerprints in our entire dataset.

    Ah crap.....

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    [–] 8 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    This is why tails even fixes browser window size. It's been a while since I looked at this landscape. Is tails still one of the best choices for, for example, whistleblowers?

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    • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    I ran the "Am I Unique?" thing, and it said yes and then showed my OS, Browser, Language and Time Zone, and 3/4 of them were wrong lol.

    I'll take that as a good sign.

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    [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Why does my browser tell javascript what plugins i have

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    [–] -1 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    I reserve a browser, like brave or edge, to use when I'm on the VPN. No plugins, no password manager, plain Jane vanilla browser + VPN, so they're "fingerprinting" something I don't use. Hard to compare when literally nothing matches.

    Good luck.

    Plus my VPN location changes often. Sometimes I use TOR browser on VPN (not sure it helps) if I'm wading through a very gray area.

    Local pihole and ublock origin (on Firefox) alone seems to make my phone "unique" on its own.

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  • [+] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    I don't do enough illegal shit to be a problem. I block 99% of ads, etc. if they really wanted me, my license plate is tracked all the time via cameras. If they really wanted me, come get me. You have to find the threshold that is acceptable to you, nothing is 100% secure without a LOT of preparation and work, which I just don't care enough about.

    I'm not out here hiding bodies, there are larger issues/people to worry about.

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