Just like how you can use a VPN to hide or mask your IP online. Is there a secure way where you can hide your device information while web searching? Disguising stuff like the web browser you use and the version it is in, the device you’re using, etc.
Could just using Tor Browser be what you are looking for?
I don’t know about Chrome based browsers but if you are using Firefox you can try user.js from arkenfox [link] or from pyllyukko [link] (I personally recommend the first one because they have a great wiki), you just put the script in your Firefox profile directory and it will spoof your screen resolution, link referrer, user agent, etc. (Remember to manually edit the file to suit your preferences, otherwise it may delete your history and cookies!).
Also you can try User-Agent Switcher and Manager [Chrome] [Firefox] it is open source and lets you change your user agent to whatever you want.
You can view your browser information on this website: https://deviceinfo.me, IMO this is a great website for identifying your browser’s privacy issues.
Depends on the sophistication of the script trying to fingerprint you.
You can fool some using an add-on like User Agent Switcher together with CanvasBlocker but an advanced script like CreepJS is very hard to fool.
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Android has an option in settings to randomize your MAC address, check that it is enabled (I believe iOS has this feature also, but I have less experience with iOS). On desktop TAILS OS does this by default.
Also you can try User-Agent Switcher and Manager [Chrome] [Firefox] it is open source and lets you change your user agent to whatever you want.
User agent switching should only be used to bypass compatibility checks, it cannot be used to change a browser’s characteristics (prevent fingerprinting), doing so will make you in fact more unique as the user agent won’t reflect the browser’s unchangeable characteristics.
add-on like User Agent Switcher
Please see above.
We’re actually thinking of writing an article about this.
prevent such fingerprint by using Firefox with customized parameters and extensions.
It is never possible to “prevent a fingerprint”, it is only possible to more easily hide in the “crowd”, whether that be a crowd of Tor Browser users, a crowd of Brave users, or a crowd of Firefox + Arkenfox users etc.
A browser like a standard Google Chrome browser which has no anti fingerprinting protection will expose “more metrics” thus be easier to fingerprint, so don’t think that because it has the highest market share you will be hiding in a bigger crowd.
Don’t both those links essentially say the same as I said?
Actually, that’s not a question. They do.
ask for MAC addresses
Only routers/network devices on the current local network segment can see this. A web server cannot see a MAC address without something like a NPAPI extension, which are not common these days and are being removed from most browsers due to security issues.
When website cannot generate same fingerprint in different session, generally you can say it can prevent fingerprint.
There is always a fingerprint.
At lease prevent some type of fingerprint, they will become random in different session, which make you unique but also not possible to track across normal browsing and private window.
If the fingerprint is being modified due to some extension it reveals various prototype and proxy lies (faked values) which not only reveal what metrics are potentially untrustworthy, but also adds to the fingerprint.
While that may not leak the real value to advanced scripts, it will still be able to record a stable metric. Extensions still leak values via workers (if the API is available there) and its also worth noting you can sometimes reverse engineer many of the “lies” produced by those extensions.
If it’s a built in protection, you can still detect that a metric is untrustworthy. First, it is not hard to detect the Firefox version, or if it’s Tor Browser, or if privacy.resistFingerprinting is enabled. These combined tell you what is protected - so you wouldn’t even have to test for them.
Same goes for Brave, you can detect it’s Brave and the shield level and chromium version (from feature detection) - so you know exactly what the browser is doing. These do not leak (if they did that’s a bug) the real value. The point is that the metric can be detected as untrustworthy and recorded as a static result regardless of subsequent tests so randomizing does not work against advanced scripts.
You can tell from information paradoxes (if something is true, the other thing cannot be true), and then determine that the whole lie is false or not to be trusted. And you can also use mathematical proofs to also show false values (such as known canvas and WebGL pixel tests, or DOMRect).
Spoofing to lower entropy and randomizing to raise entropy are the same thing when it comes to advanced scripts: they only protect the real value, and advanced protections don;t give a shit about hiding that they enabled and protecting - brave doesn’t try to hide it their shield level or that they are brave, TB doesn’t try to hide that it is Tor Browser, privacy.resistFingerprinting doesn’t try to hide that itself.