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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#2

Post by _gyhb »

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.info/2020/12/10/how-anti-fingerprinting-exten...

Vytal utilizes the chrome.debugger API to spoof this data. This allows the data to be spoofed in frames, web workers and during the initial loading of a website. It also makes the spoofing completely undetectable.

You can test and compare Vytal and other extensions on https://vytal.io

Unfortunately it doesn't work on Firefox since Firefox doesn't support the debugger API. Works on Brave tho.

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

#3

Post by 0x0000000 »

_gyhb wrote: 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'm commenting here both to remind myself to check back and try this out when I'm not on mobile, and to thank you for building this- at first glance it looks good.

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

#4

Post by 0des »

_gyhb wrote: 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 squandering their endowments on salary, too much focus on social signaling and politics. Just be a browser, please.

I won't be going to anything chrome-like, but I do see myself spending a lot more time using and sponsoring qutebrowser, or simply passively consuming offline.

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

#7

Post by _gyhb »

lilsoso wrote: post #6

Very interesting. Is there a risk that installing Chrome plugins makes your browser fingerprint more unique? Isn't the list of installed plugin-ins checked?

Chrome extensions can be detected by fetching their web-accessible resources. These are files inside an extension that can be accessed by web pages.

Vytal has no web-accessible resources so it can not be detected.

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

#8

Post by judge2020 »

0des wrote: post #4
_gyhb wrote: 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…

> still taking the google allowance,

Doesn't Mozilla's revenue breakdown still show Google as the majority of their revenue, and pocket et al are efforts to diversify?

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

#10

Post by tauwauwau »

_gyhb wrote: 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.…

Just installed it, it's showing a message on top of each tab in Chrome

"Vytal" started debugging this browser

Is there a way to get rid of it?

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