Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 99 posts

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#51
post #2

Recently made this extension and interested in getting some feedback on it. Vytal can Spoof your timezone, locale, geolocation and user agent. This data can be used to track you or reveal your location. Most extensions that provide anti-fingerprinting features rely on content scripts to inject script tags into webpages. There are many limitations to script tag injections which you can read about here: https://palant.…

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

Many (most?) VPN mechanisms don't entirely remove access to the other routes from apps that manually request them, so even if an app isn't able to use something akin to "location services" on your device it might still easily be able to get access to your other IP addresses by sending requests with sockets manually bound to specific interfaces, and even might choose to lower the priority of information learned using interfaces that are clearly tunnel devices instead of network cards.

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#53
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

Many (most?) VPN mechanisms don't entirely remove access to the other routes from apps that manually request them, so even if an app isn't able to use something akin to "location services" on your device it might still easily be able to get access to your other IP addresses by sending requests with sockets manually bound to specific interfaces, and even might choose to lower the priority of information learned using…

Also known as split tunnel, this can be used by corporate VPN solutions to lower the amount of network traffic entering a data center (so you don’t overload your undersized pipes)

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#54
post #4
post #2

Recently made this extension and interested in getting some feedback on it. Vytal can Spoof your timezone, locale, geolocation and user agent. This data can be used to track you or reveal your location. Most extensions that provide anti-fingerprinting features rely on content scripts to inject script tags into webpages. There are many limitations to script tag injections which you can read about here: https://palant.…

I dont want to dislike firefox, but I am starting to find new reasons to resent it. It seems like every other week there is something new I'm finding out about that gives me pause before running updates. Every new 'feature' brings me further and further away from feeling like it's a browser I can trust to be just a browser. Something has to change. Pocket, Allo, still taking the google allowance, absolutely squanderi…

Allo? I think you confused this with something else if you're referring to Google Allo chat app.

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#55
post #2

Recently made this extension and interested in getting some feedback on it. Vytal can Spoof your timezone, locale, geolocation and user agent. This data can be used to track you or reveal your location. Most extensions that provide anti-fingerprinting features rely on content scripts to inject script tags into webpages. There are many limitations to script tag injections which you can read about here: https://palant.…

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

This could also happen if you have a misconfigured VPN with a DNS leak. Check out this website for clues: https://ipleak.net/

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#56
post #4
post #2

Recently made this extension and interested in getting some feedback on it. Vytal can Spoof your timezone, locale, geolocation and user agent. This data can be used to track you or reveal your location. Most extensions that provide anti-fingerprinting features rely on content scripts to inject script tags into webpages. There are many limitations to script tag injections which you can read about here: https://palant.…

I dont want to dislike firefox, but I am starting to find new reasons to resent it. It seems like every other week there is something new I'm finding out about that gives me pause before running updates. Every new 'feature' brings me further and further away from feeling like it's a browser I can trust to be just a browser. Something has to change. Pocket, Allo, still taking the google allowance, absolutely squanderi…

Chrome is about to kill add blockers and you're complaining that Firefox doesn't have a super niche feature?!

You can literally accomplish this in firefox by other means.

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#58
post #2

Recently made this extension and interested in getting some feedback on it. Vytal can Spoof your timezone, locale, geolocation and user agent. This data can be used to track you or reveal your location. Most extensions that provide anti-fingerprinting features rely on content scripts to inject script tags into webpages. There are many limitations to script tag injections which you can read about here: https://palant.…

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

firefox has something called the mozilla location provider, which maps wifi access points to locations, which is similar to what google maps uses when you have gps disabled on mobile

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

This could also happen if you have a misconfigured VPN with a DNS leak. Check out this website for clues: https://ipleak.net/

I checked and my DNS is not leaked through the VPN. Even if it was, how could that result in such an accurate localisation?

Re: Show HN: Browser extension that spoofs your location data to match your VPN

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how Firefox (or Chrome) knows my location within 20m even if I use a VPN? Brave puts me where I think the VPN exit point is. For example: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/

firefox has something called the mozilla location provider, which maps wifi access points to locations, which is similar to what google maps uses when you have gps disabled on mobile

This would make sense, thank you. Apparently Chrome has something similar?
Post reply on HN