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?
Yeah so, Dynamic IP set up with the ISP. Running Librewolf, on the strictest browser settings, using Mullvad’s secure DNS and Riseup-VPN, with my IP address being NL (Nowhere close to my part of the world). No pop-ups enabled, resist finger printing enabled, no cookies, delete temporary files and cache upon exit. Sharing location disabled (obviously) requests to use any of the hardware all blocked. Only thing running to get the site to work is Java, that I turn on after already getting to the site. Still knows where I am. Start Tor Relay with browser configured to route traffic over socks5, try again with New DNS, Try a 3rd time now with Tor over vpn, still nothing. I actually had a much spookier thing happen with Brave’s Leo attempting this from my phone. I use a chinese phone, banned where I live, never for sale. I lived on a different continent when I purchased it. I asked it a question about enabling developer options. It gave me the specific instructions then my make, model and firmware version. When I asked how it knew what phone I had, it told me it was guessing and denied being able to see all the data on my device. This is on the android web browser, with the embedded AI. Fuck me, dude, how do we stop them from collecting data on our hardware? Like, I would love to use Qubes, but the architecture of my machine, just doesn’t support it.