this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Privacy
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Having your browser lie about every detail is anonymous, but not k-anonymous. i.e. Nobody will know who you are, but your browser fingerprint is unique and so you will not blend in with everyone else. The Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser try to be k-anonymous, so everyone looks the same. Brave Browser is an interesting case where all fingerprint data is randomized, so you are not by definition k-anonymous, but you do blend in with all other Brave users in that it is all randomized in the same way for everyone.
In summary:
I would be very careful about saying Tor/Mullvad/Brave are anywhere near approaching k-anonymity... Tor Browser cannot even hide your real OS when queried from javascript, and there are current ways to detect all of those browsers independently.
I think one problem is that most people's (general non-tech population) browser setups are completely bone-stock, and so by definition "random like everyone else" is likely already excluding all the stock users and placing you in a much smaller box to compare against.
I agree, but it's the best we have so far. If you take some time to sit down and think about it, a lot of the problems with internet privacy can't be fixed without a complete overhaul of our existing systems.
This is true, but the exception is Tails which lies about being Windows.
Lying about your host OS does nothing to protect against OS fingerprinting. Your OS can still he determined through the differences in how each OS renders and handles the Browser, and underlying architectural differences between browsers on each OS.
I wish I knew how tails does it so that I could make my Linux do it as well.
Edit: oh, it's just spoofing the user agent af far as I can see. That doesn't hide it being linux at all.
Are you saying Tails has a custom fork of TBB that spoofs the OS? Do you have a link to that patch?
Tails is an operating system. Try booting into Tails yourself and use various websites to see what I'm talking about: All of them report your operating system to be Windows, despite Tails being based on Debian.
Yes, and it comes with Tor Browser, which normally does not spoof your OS when probed via javascript (only the user-agent), that is why I asked if you had a patch to the source code, which is what they would have to be using in order to do what you're saying.
As it stands, I am not able to verify your claims, as Tor Browser on Tails 6.7 is still showing the true OS via javascript queries for me:
https://0x0.st/XYZF.png