73 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
73 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
<p>As of late I've been seeing a lot of renewed interest for internet privacy,
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particularly regarding certain social media platforms. This is, of course, not
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something new. This is a struggle that's been going on for years, as you can
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find even within my own blog post history there are several articles referring
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to the matter, and it's an issue older than my own posts. Yet what I find
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baffling is the method being proposed: the use of a VPN.</p>
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<p>The purpose of a VPN is (at least for common 'privacy' usage) to hide one's
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IP address. In this sense, many people simply use VPNs as a substitute for TOR
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or I2P, but with a better connection and often the ability to choose the country
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your VPN is located in. If you're using a VPN simply to connect to a web service
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and avoid country content blocking, then a VPN is definitely a useful tool. But
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if your purpose is to protect your IP address for privacy reasons, then a VPN is
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practically useless especially when we're talking about social media
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surveillance. If you're trying to stop Facebook, Google, or any other company
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from tracking your online activity, a VPN is quite pointless. There are a few
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different reasons why this is.</p>
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<p>Firstly, if you're using a VPN to log into your Google or Facebook account,
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then they already know who you are whether or not they know your IP address.
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They have associated you with the content of your profile, and can track you
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that way. Sure, they may not know the exact town you live in from your IP
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address, but they do know (with more precision) from your profile and the
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content you give them. Therefore, by logging into one of these accounts, you've
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rendered your efforts to remain anonymous completely futile.</p>
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<p>Secondly, and basing off of the previous assumption, once you've logged into
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an account, or if you have cookies enabled, then you can be tracked all across
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the web. It doesn't matter that you're sharing a VPN IP address with thousands
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of other people, because you have a unique string that's being sent to their
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servers every time you connect that identifies you uniquely. If you log into
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your Google account, the Google server will store a cookie on your computer that
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uniquely identifies you. This is normally used to facilitate things like
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automatic logins the next time you visit the site. However, when you visit
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another site that may have a Google login available, or if the page uses Google
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fonts, these servers can ask for your cookies and see whether or not you have
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that unique identifier, and therefore know identify you uniquely.</p>
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<p>Thirdly, regardless of whether you log in to a social media account or not, a
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website may still identify you by what is called your <em>digital
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fingerprint</em>. Essentially, when you connect to a website, the server can
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discover many characteristics about your system, and although none of these
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might be unique in itself, together they can form a profile that is much more
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likely to be unique to a single user, and therefore be useful for
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identification. Some example of characteristics that can be found are such as
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screen resolution, operating system, architecture, web engine, etc. And since
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these characteristics tend to remain mostly the same, it is a reliable manner to
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track someone online. There are also some websites, like
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AmIUnique,<sup><a href="#r1" >[1]</a></sup> which can show you the kind of data
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from your system which a web server has access to, and how unique these
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characteristics are (although based on their own collection, which is a skewed
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statistic).</p>
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<p>On the other hand, the reason why IP address is not a reliable means of
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tracking someone's activity is, not only because VPNs and other alternatives
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(e.g. TOR or I2P) are available, but also simply because this will change even
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if you move, change your provider, commute to work (i.e. use a different
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network), or simply leave your router off for a given amount of time (normally
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24 hours) for your ISP to designate you a new dynamic IP address. Companies like
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Google and Facebook know this, so it's not reliable. The days when people would
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almost always connect from the IP address are long gone.</p>
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<p>If your interest is in protecting your privacy then a VPN is not worth it, as
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it's practically useless. Instead, try looking at addons for your browser that
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spoof your online fingerprint and delete the cookies stored on your computer.
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But perhaps more importantly, don't use your social media accounts (e.g. Google
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or Facebook) to connect to any other site than that social media site.</p>
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<h2>References</h2>
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<ol class="refs" >
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<li><a href="https://www.amiunique.org/fp" >AmIUnique Website</a></li>
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</ol>
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