Merry Christmas 2018!
Luke 2:8-20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
8 In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
15 When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.”16 So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. 17 When they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.
Posted in Biblical Accounts, Christian, Holiday
Browser Fingerprinting: What Is It and What Should You Do About It?
Basically your web browser is probed to determine what add-ons you have installed, what fonts are installed on your computer, what video card your computer has (via WebGL), PNG hash, what operating system you are using, your web browser’s 2D canvas, etc. All of this information is combined to form a fingerprint of your web browser.
Now you may be asking, “How does this allow someone to track my online visits?” Good question. People can make use of this fingerprinting to track you even if you take measures to deter people from monitoring your online activity (e.g., using a VPN).
If you have ever visited a website (without using a VPN) and later on you visit the same website (this time, using a VPN), they can still have a pretty good guess that it is you just by looking at your browser fingerprint you left the last time you visited (without the VPN).
This is how websites like YouTube still show you relevant recommendations, even if you use another IP address to access their web service.
Is there any way to stop browser fingerprinting? Not really. You can help confuse trackers into thinking you are someone else by spoofing the fingerprint, but this is not guaranteed to always work.
A browser fingerprint spoofer basically “lies” to a website giving it false information about the web browser. This of course causes the fingerprint to be different than it normally would be. The result? A website thinks you are someone else regardless of the IP address you are connecting from.
(This does not take into account tracking cookies. Websites can also track you with cookies, regardless if they use web browser fingerprinting techniques.)
So what do I recommend to do to help stop browser fingerprinting? Well you can do the following (my opinions, of course):
- use Mozilla Firefox – this is a good web browser for security and privacy
- use the Canvas Blocker for Firefox add-on – this spoofs your browser fingerprint
That should help protect your real fingerprint from being found out. I should note that spoofing your fingerprint may end up breaking certain websites. You will just have to try it out.
Please keep in mind, a browser fingerprint spoofer can end up making your fingerprint unique to everyone else’s fingerprint. This can cause you to stand out like a sore thumb, and cause you to be even more easily tracked. 🙁
This is because most people are not using a fingerprint spoofer and it would become obvious that you (and maybe a couple of other people) are the only ones faking your browser fingerprints. In other words, you do not “blend into the crowd”.
Another trick is to turn on Mozilla Firefox’s “resist fingerprint” feature. This feature, among other things, causes your web browser’s fingerprint to match that of the TOR web browser. This makes you blend into the crowd of TOR users, since they all should be using the same fingerprint.
To turn this feature on:
- at the about:config webpage (on Firefox), find the option privacy.resistFingerprinting and set it to true, then restart the web browser
However this feature (in my experience) causes some websites to break (animations are slowed down, current time of day will not be correct, etc.) This all helps to prevent websites from fingerprinting the browser.
Please remember that there is no way to be 100% anonymous on the Internet. Always someone out there who can track you. All you are doing is making it harder to be tracked.
I hope I have helped someone with this blog post. It took me a bit to write it, but it is worth it if it helps. 🙂
Posted in Computers, Security, Software, VPN
What Can People Tell from My IP Address?
Before we start, I need to make sure you know that just because someone has your IP address, does not mean that they can easily figure out who you are. This is because ISPs (Internet Service Providers) keep this information confidential, and usually only law enforcement agencies (with the proper papers) can even have a chance to find out who is / was using a particular IP address.
Also, please keep in mind that many IP addresses are “shared”. There could be dozens (if not hundreds) of computers behind one IP address. So even if you found out who is in charge of an IP address, that information does not prove that the IP administrator is the same person who did something malicious. It could have been any one of those “computers” that did the malicious deed.
Here are different ways a “non-connected” (an average Internet user with no ties to any government agency) can try to figure out who you are.
Geo-Location
This is when someone uses an online service to get the location of an IP address. One such online tool is located here: https://iplocation.com/
The problem with IP Geo-location services is that they are typically inaccurate. You never know for sure if the user is anywhere close to where these services say they are. In addition, if the user is using a VPN service, they are usually not anywhere close to the stated location anyway.
Summary: Geo-Location lookup services are typically useless to find out someone’s true location.
Reverse IP Lookup
This is when someone does a reverse lookup on an IP address to determine if there is anything identifying the user (typically a domain name that is associated with an IP address).
If someone can pair the domain name with an IP address, this might give away who is running a particular IP address.
However, this method is usually useless since most people are going to have an IP address that does not have any custom reverse lookup name. This is especially true for people using a dynamic IP address via a residential connection.
Even if you find a unique domain name being used for an IP address’ reverse name, you still would have to know who registered the domain name.
Summary: A reverse IP lookup usually does not provide any useful information (especially for residential IP addresses).
Being Careless Online
This is when you give out too much information about yourself on the Internet. This would make it a whole lot easier for someone who is running a website (e.g., a web forum) to know who you are, regardless of the IP address you are connecting from.
Summary: Being careless online with your information does not help you to stay anonymous.
As you can see, most (if not all) average Internet users would have a hard time trying to figure out who is behind an IP address, without someone purposely exposing information about themselves.
Therefore, unless you are doing something to attract the attention of a large, well-connected organization (e.g., a government agency) or giving out too much personal information online, you should be fine.
In addition, using a reputable VPN service will pretty much prevent any average Internet user from ever knowing your true IP address, much less your true location.
Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Security, VPN
Something Interesting that Happened with a VPN Service
I have a website I have been working on for a little while now (brand new; only two friends know about it; Google had not listed it yet).
I tested my new website by browsing to it from a remote location (via a paid VPN service) to see if it came up fine.
Unexpectedly, later on that day, a computer from France suddenly accessed my website (Quick Note: the VPN IP address I used was not located in France).
Soon after, Google suddenly knew about my website and the next day indexed it.
Now I admit I did not have the website password protected before launch (I should have), but what I find strange is that there was no real web traffic to my website until I used the VPN service.
I am not the type of person to become paranoid, but I find that to be quite a coincidence. I was left wondering if my VPN service was in fact spying on me. As I said, there was practically no traffic to my new website, and that was the case for around a week.
Please keep in mind I have no proof that my VPN service was spying on me. It may have been Google (and the other random computer from France) just happened to find out about the website the same day I used the VPN.
I guess I am left with an unsolved mystery. 🙂
Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Security, VPN