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Fauxx Data poisoning for your everyday tracking (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Fauxx is an open-source Android privacy tool that poisons data broker and ad-tech profiles by generating continuous, plausible, off-demographic synthetic activity from your device. The goal is simple: make your real behavioral signal statistically indistinguishable from noise.

Not my project, but though this is really cool and worth sharing.

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[–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (10 children)

Interesting, how useful is it if I'm always behind a VPN and browse privately (hardened browser, ad blocker, no-script, never logged in etc.)?

May be wrong but the way I see it it doesn't help me much?

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    i only did a quick readthrough so my understanding of how it works is probably flawed. that said:

    you could consider split-tunneling a browser outside of your normal stack for fauxx to pollute. that way your real activity remains as close to "ghost" as possible, and gives your device a fake fingerprint that will fool anyone not directly targeting you.

    the reason I'd suggest doing it that way is that nobody's personal device hygiene is perfect. flooding with synthetic data is a great way to help conceal when you slip up.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Go further. I’m listening like a regard trying to understand

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    you're kind of giving me a blank slate to talk here so let me hit the biggest point that is tangential to this conversation.

    the easiest point for me to make is that if, on your phone, you bought your SIM card (and attached phone number) with payment info that can be tracked to your bank and your real name, your location is compromised whenever that card is online. this is something that the vast majority of privacy enthusiasts either neglect due to lack of knowledge, or cannot afford to remove from their threat profile due to the pervasiveness of cell networks in day to day life.

    The most recent example i can give of this being necessary to consider in your privacy posture: In the US, ICE is using this combination of personal information and compromised locations to focus their efforts in neighborhoods with a primarily minority population.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    whenever that card is online

    Do you mean when the card is an active card viable for use? Or stored in the phone somehow? I'm curious what online means and if I am doing it... I don't have any payments connected to a mobile phone but I do have a SIM card, probably paid for with a now expired card.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    basically, a SIM is what connects your phone to your mobile provider's network. Any time you want to use that infrastructure (the phone turns on, you turn off airplane mode, you turn on your eSIM) your phone makes a request to the network, which requires an authentication via the IMSI number provided by the SIM. When this happens, your location is triangulated and your status as a cell network subscriber is verified. this process also happens periodically, and more frequently if you're on the move. The technical reason for this is that your phone needs to know which towers to route requests to, and that you are paying for the service.

    Theoretically, your phone is capable of being triangulated even without a SIM. However, for this to happen (outside of calling emergency services) as far as I'm aware this requires some sort of device compromise and is therefore out of most people's scope. If you're paranoid of tracking, remove your sim (or disable it if it is an eSIM) and if you're super paranoid, grab a faraday bag to put it in.

    let me know if i didnt explain anything well enough.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Thanks! Now I think that when you said "card is online" you meant the SIM card, not credit card. I use an alternative OS that, as I understand it, does a little to offset the tracking but it is, indeed, outside of my scope! I mostly have my phone on airplane mode, even away from home, but of course not always. I do know that this OS eliminates the ability for the phone to call home when on airplane mode.

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  • [+] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I'm going to be a little pedantic here, I hope you don't mind.

    I wouldn't say your location can be triangulated by SSID. you're 100% correct about them being findable online, and that's why its important to rotate your said every few months to a year. also, don't be creative with it, just have it be the generic manufacturer string or something similar if you can.

    with that database, people can tell where you've BEEN, not where you ARE. it doesn't necessarily compromise your immediate location.

    however, yes, it can assist with that. most phones, when not connected to WiFi, broadcast all the SSIDs they have saved in an attempt to connect to one of them. that's another fingerprint. the caveat is that someone needs to be relatively close to you to be able to snoop those broadcasts, or have a device installed somewhere that's snooping all traffic. in those cases someone is already following you or you're (probably) in a fairly public place.

    this is also an easy one to foil. when you leave a location where you connect to WiFi, turn your WiFi off so that your phone isn't constantly broadcasting for it. this saves battery as a nice bonus. grapheneOS enables this by default.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I guess Amazon and other IoT devices scan the WiFi points in proximity, so if I'm using a site with an Amazon tracker that can communicate WiFi points available to my phone, and one is a Ring camera node, then they know where I am.

    Next I just need to figure out how to make my home WiFi signal undetectable if possible.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    nobody's personal device hygiene is perfect

    fair point. guess I'll try to understand a bit better how everything works before making a decision

    side note: I like how in this thread we have a crow, a f3nyx and a raccoon lol

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