I am currently using Proton VPN (free tier) which is set to Always-ON and Block Connections on disable.
Today while I am going through my Gmail security option, on the devices/sessions I found my real location mentioned over there. Even when I use desktop I always connect to VPN.
On this issue I got couple of doubts:
- Is this because I am using a free tier VPN? so it’s not functioning properly etc…
- Else google fixed my location based on my previous location history? I used my google applications without VPN for many years, I am just learning & following privacy tips recently.
I see comments like this a lot, but they seldom say how it actually does work. How does it work?
It’s all dependent on what you’re doing and how. Like if you use Facebook you’re fingerprinted to the tits.
The granularity depends on examples like that.
But something a bit more benign and not as granular would be finger printing you based on the timezone your browser offers up. It’s not as basic as like “-7 GMT” since the iso list can go down to the state and or country. So if in your OS you picked “America/Houston” a lot of browsers will pony that up without hesitation.
How many more bits of data until you know what city I’m in, Street I’m on. Etc. And there’s tons of ways to derive that data over time.
https://browserleaks.com/ is an interesting example that can show all the bits of data your browser can give up.
And of course you can lock lots down given the right tools.