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[Question] VPN and Mobile Data
(lemmy.ml)
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Your VPN isn't leaking. It's same with me. When we do speedtest via app, the speedtest app looks for connections details (mobile data or wifi). And in the speedtest(ookla) database they have records of all the tower locations and every tower has an unique id. So, when we do the speedtest with the app (not from website), the app detects user is using mobile data or wifi, if former is true, then based on the signal strength to the tower from that device, the app searches in the database about the tower info (belongs to which telecom operator) which the user is connected, then it shows the name of the operator.
This is a very interesting way of tracking users.
Even if you haven't enabled GPS, or mobile data or internet and your are using degoogled phone like GrapheneOS, if you have sim card there, you will still be tracked because the app (non open sourced apps) we use, as most(if not all) of them has this functionality built in, to detect users location based on signal strength to the tower.
So, stick with open sourced apps, and web apps if you can. And install the closed source apps on a different user profile and then turned that profile off when not in use.
+1
Also, WiFi can also be used to track users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poaqwozBqHY
Yes.. Switching to firmware like OpenWrt and doing the stuff mentioned by Naomi, can help mitigate
Wouldn't that not work outside of the user's home, or does openWRT have a mobile client or something? I saw there is now a router with preinstalled openwrt on the market and was interested to try one of those IP antenna things with it.
They don't have mobile client. There is OpenWrt One router by OpenWrt and another is Gl.inet that uses OpenWrt.