Is changing you phone system region to a more populated country in the same time zone a sensible way to reduce fingerprint? Say, for instance, that I live in Luxembourg but change my system region to Germany. I know that is just one of many things a website can identify about your system in a mobile browser, but if https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ is anything to go by, it does reduce the bits of identifying information somewhat. Or would doing this cause other problems?
If you don’t use a VPN, it can be quite simple and useful on sites that don’t try to determine your location from your IP address (except for unique additional data that distinguishes you from others), but it’s meaningless if you don’t have a VPN. I don’t know about Brave, firrfox (mullvad not have) on PC, but on Android it always detects your region based on your time zone, which is quite bad when combined with a VPN! Doing this randomly would be quite obvious and noticeable, so if you’re using cromite and browsing the web without logging in and without using a VPN, it’s best to change your time zone at regular intervals.
I hate Android Brave. I can’t simply disable V8 or WebGL, I can’t simply add the search engine I want, and along with other things I can’t change, I keep seeing coin names that I don’t care about.
Also, this phone is not region-locked 
Even if the region is different, you will see the original version.
same translate sorry
I do use Mullvad VPN. Websites can still see ones system region + timezone (in the format timezone/capital city) in addition to ones “location” (VPN server location). So my idea was to change the region to a more populated country in the same timezone as I am actually located, because “Europe/Berlin + random VPN server” would surely look less conspicuous than “Europe/Luxembourg (made up example) + random VPN server”?
From my ignorant perspective, this seems like a no-brainer. But I’m a bit hesitant because: A) I don’t know what other consequences this would have. And B) I don’t think I’ve ever seen this recommended as a privacy measure. So there may very well be good reasons not to do this that I’m not aware of.
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No harm in doing this actually. Changing your system time to your VPN location time doesn’t have any other consequences. Your PC’s time doesn’t impact anything else. It’s not recommended or rather actively recommended as a real measure because it’s just inconvenient to not see your real time on your computer at a glance. As I understand, that’s the only reason.
What you’re saying is possible and can be done. Again, no harm. But I also imagine it’s only a marginal benefit. Any website will still know you’re on a VPN. So you’re only mitigating this one fingerprinting vector which is doing too much for just one thing.
This would be specifically for mobile rather than PC, since the browsers I use on PC seem to be able to spoof the computer’s timezone.
It would be inconvenient to not see the local time, hence why I will change to another country in the same timezone.
I am aware that it doesn’t eliminate the fingerprint or anything. I’m also not changing the system region to match the vpn location: Mullvad exit servers are known so there is no hiding the fact that I’m using a vpn. All I’m trying to do is reduce the uniqueness of the fingerprint by changing my location from my small home country with fewer internet users to a bigger country with more internet users.
Does anyone know if changing sytem region could interfere with the SIM card in any way?
There should be no issue here.
Sure, you can still do this. But not sure if any benefit you receive is worth all this effort. Give it a try for a week and see if anything causes issues. To me, what you’re trying to do makes little sense to do it - not that you shouldn’t or can’t be done.
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Thank! Yes I may very well decide that it’s not worth it, but it thought I’d ask just to know the pros and cons.
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This is useless for apps. They can already access all your downloaded apps, and much more. So they can fp you trivially.
Can be useful, especially in small countries.
Unrelated, but Chromium working on a way to have websites use your preffered language while not leaking the whole list of your system languages.
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I think that’s the key part. If you use a VPN 24/7, I think it’s absolutely worth it.
I use a VPN 24/7 on my phone and I have the kill switch on. This means that if the VPN is disconnected, no app will connect to the internet.
At the same time, it is my understanding that if you travel to another time zone your phone will automatically adjust its clock once it’s connected to the internet. It’s unclear to me if your phone always knows your location, or if the clock won’t adjust if you use a VPN. From my experience, VPNs don’t change clocks.
Would love someone with better knowledge to provide insight into this.
There’s always a setting in your phone to not auto change to local time. This way you’ll have to manually change it everytime. You can also disable the option in iOS related to this setting within location settings.
My bad. It seems websites can not detect system region, but only timezone region, that you set under Date and time rather than Language and region. At least this is the case on Vanadium browser, GrapheneOS.
Tested with:
So changing the timezone region to a bigger country in the same timezone might be a slight fingerprinting reduction if you live in a smaller country, and can be done independently of system region, at least on GrapheneOS.
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They can detect locale which is your language + region. This can be spoofed, and more browser spoof this than let’s say timezone.
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