Due to the giant GOPstrich in the room. I have switched to linux and been actively trying to learn as much computer science as possible. I set up a TOR relay using Librewolf as the browser, using socks5 to send data from the browser, through the network. As an experiment, I asked Microsoft’s AI where I was and it immediately returned my city. I tried again using a VPN, with a different browser and it still got it right. So, I wanted to ask, how can we limit the telemetry collected by these programs? How can we better limit their ability to spy on us?
It might have been your DNS that was identified? It depends on whether you enabled proxy DNS for SOCKS5.
For best fingerprinting protection, use either:
Avoid using Tor with a normal browser because you will stick out like a sore thumb.
Yeah, Librewolf by default doesn’t use DoT neither DoH, and so your IP is still exposed, but Librewolf had made it fairly easy to change through preferences or the librewolf overrides, whatever more convenient, as stated on its DoH enabling documentation.
That is not what I was referring to. DoH is easy to access in the settings, but with a SOCKS5 proxy you want DNS from the provider to avoid fingerprinting of your location by using a network or DoH provider, which may be a geographically closer server because of your host IP.
Under about:config, change “network.proxy.socks5_remote_dns” to true.
I don’t know definitively why they were fingerprinted to there local city, this is just a theoretical reason.