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I am using the following extensions on google chrome for complete privacy and to avoid tracking:

  1. VPN Extension to hide actual IP
  2. WebRTC prevent extension for disabling WebRTC

What other extensions should I use? I cannot use TOR instead of VPN as many websites don't allow access via TOR.

Shashwat Kumar
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  • Are you immovable on the idea that you could use another browser? There are other browsers that make it easier to not be tracked... – schroeder Jul 09 '21 at 13:08
  • @schroeder No, not restricted to chrome but I can't use Tor and many sites disallow the access using TOR. – Shashwat Kumar Jul 09 '21 at 13:39
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    So, back up a step. You want to browse without being tracked, and you can't use Tor. Start from that, don't start with Chrome. – schroeder Jul 09 '21 at 13:41
  • OP, WRT 'many sites disallow the access using TOR' - you might want to consider a `VPN over TOR`. This way, sites blocking TOR won't block you (because the IP they will see will be your VPN's IP) and your VPN won't see your IP (because they'll the IP of your TOR exit node). See https://exposingtheinvisible.org/en/guides/vpn-over-tor/ for more info. – mti2935 Jul 09 '21 at 13:50
  • @mti2935 what would be the point of that? There is little difference between just using a VPN in that case. – LvB Jul 09 '21 at 13:57
  • @LvB Some sites block connections coming from TOR exit nodes. If you use a `VPN over TOR`, the site sees the IP of the VPN instead of the IP of the TOR exit node. – mti2935 Jul 09 '21 at 14:05
  • @mti2935 some sites block vpns too. And using. A vpn does nearly all the things TOR does… and chaining then does come with a hefty price in data increase and slowdowns of the connection. Combine that with the fact that just having the IP address yields little information. (Encryption of the connection is much more important for that). – LvB Jul 09 '21 at 14:17
  • @LvB VPN's and TOR each have their own use cases. See https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/72679/differences-between-using-tor-browser-and-vpn for some interesting reading on this subject. – mti2935 Jul 09 '21 at 14:37
  • @LvB VPNs are still hard to be blocked as the providers keep rotating IP and pooling new IPs into it. And I agree that VPN over TOR is unnecessary and would drastically reduce internet speed. – Shashwat Kumar Jul 09 '21 at 17:06
  • @schroeder Yeah. I can surely do that. – Shashwat Kumar Jul 09 '21 at 17:15
  • "VPN", the 'P'rivate depends on the policy and terms of use. Some VPNs, specially free, track their users. – St0rm Jul 09 '21 at 18:23
  • @ShashwatKumar hard to block? Not that hard. There are services like https://www.ipqualityscore.com/ip-block-list-blacklist that offer exactly a means to easily block connections from both TOR and VPN’s. Especially if you have acces to the BGP tables, knowing what IP’s to block for (commercial) VPNs is easy. If you run your own VPN that is harder to block, but those don’t offer any privacy advantages. – LvB Jul 10 '21 at 10:41
  • @mti2935 I question most use cases presented by most people in favour of VPN’s and TOR… I agree they have there use-case (TOR to browse the Union network, VPNs to access otherwise not available resources) but if you use TLS, the traffic itself you generate is already protected in the same way as with TOR/VPN.. DoT enables a way to not leak your dns queries and TLS 1.3 has means in it to encrypt the full communication (so including the SNI part). Finally, an IP address is not that useful as a data point. – LvB Jul 10 '21 at 10:48
  • @LvB I agree that TLS is very effective for providing secrecy. But, you ISP can still see which sites you are connecting to. This is a problem for journalists, whistle-blowers, political dissidents, etc., especially in countries with oppressive governments with state-run ISP's. – mti2935 Jul 10 '21 at 17:46
  • @mti2935 for those cases you could use a VPN or TOR, but those are either professionals that should get professional help with ensuring there safety… but nearly all sites someone like that needs access to do not care about TOR or VPN’s connecting to them. Most people simply do not need to worry about it. And the remainder should already know what to do or be at risk already. – LvB Jul 10 '21 at 18:14

2 Answers2

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Using a VPN with Chrome is not the same as using TOR. Your VPN provider knows your IP, and can also see which sites you are visiting. With TOR, there is no one entity that can see both.

mti2935
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  • Yeah, that I know that. Here we can assume that I trust VPN and no issues from its end. I am interested in knowing other things that we can add to the browser. – Shashwat Kumar Jul 09 '21 at 13:02
  • @ShashwatKumar then you need to describe who you do not want tracking you ... Google? VPN? Or just the sites you visit? – schroeder Jul 09 '21 at 13:07
  • @schroeder It's mainly for the sites I visit where I can login and create account. – Shashwat Kumar Jul 09 '21 at 13:40
  • This is in fact not true… but it does require more work and having acces to more than a single node in the chain. But basically your just using 2 networks if you use for, and the endpoints/ routers know much about you by necessity… and with enough you can reconstruct the paths… – LvB Jul 09 '21 at 14:03
  • @LvB, That's true - if all of the nodes in your TOR circuit collude, then they can learn your IP and the sites that you are connecting to. But, without colluding, the entry node can see only your IP and not the sites that you are connecting to, and the exit node can see only the sites that you are connecting to and not your IP, and the intermediate nodes can see neither. – mti2935 Jul 09 '21 at 14:17
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Some Chrome extensions that can help include:

  • uBlock Origin
  • Privacy Badger
  • HTTPs Everywhere
  • DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
  • and Disconnect

These will do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of blocking advertising trackers, cookies, and ensuring that you are using encryption wherever possible.

In general, I would advise against using Chrome as Google in general makes a lot of its money from collecting data about you and sharing it with others.

jsaigle
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