Came from this question.
After a day, I order my thoughts, and decided to create a new topic to re-ask my question because I didn’t ask well.
Basically as the title says, did actively get different public IPs (e.g. by rebooting router) gives me additional privacy?
As you already stated in the other thread, the IP is not the only fingerprinting vector. But, it is still one. So, in regards to the entities where you think that’s the only fingerprinting vector left for them to be able to track you, then yes, if you change your IP these entities would have a harder time tracking you.
For example the NTP request that your OS does to some time server, that protocol is pretty simple and there are not many other characteristics for fingerprinting in the first place other than your IP address. Or even with the web, some browsers like Mullvad Browser try to minimize the amount of information that can be used for fingerprinting so that ideally, only the IP address itself remains. Whether that is actually the case and a concern for you, that’s for you to decide. Basically, we don’t know your network traffic so we don’t know what you’re already leaking.
Now one last thing I want to touch upon is that you refer to “getting a different public IP” by rebooting your router. That might indeed give you a different IP, but your ISP probably only has so many IP addresses that they can hand out and maybe they even restrict the pool of addresses that you get in your physical location to a small block. In that case, a network entity that you’re communicating with could over time notice this pattern and still reasonably use your IP address(es) for tracking. With a VPN where a lot of people share the same IP and presumably talk to the same entities that you’re also talking to, that would not be as easy.
Realistically my answer would therefore be no, you’re not really getting more privacy from anyone employing smart fingerprinting techniques. But yes, it could improve the situation somewhat in regards to entities that only do some very rudimentary and primitive logging. But if you think IP address is a concern in your situation, I would look at techniques other than rebooting your router.
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I agree with Catering9655 - better to use a VPN, but if you really want to reboot your router do at least check you are getting a different IP address as a result.
Depending on your connection type - my experience is mainly with ADSL, and even there it’s mostly based on rumors seen on forums over the years - if you reboot your router too frequently your ISP may incorrectly infer that your line can’t handle the current connection speed reliably and lower it, so you could end up getting slower speeds a result.
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