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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by glint@mander.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

I use a VPN and/or Tor to do the majority of my websurfing/streaming/torrenting. Some programs (notably web browsers) can read your local system time to access your timezone. And, I happen to live in... let's just say a very "narrow" timezone, my country of origin can be trivially pinpointed if you take a look at the UTC offset.

I know Firefox has a setting to spoof my timezone to UTC, but chromium browsers do not have that option (at least no option i could find after a fairly extensive search), and I don't even know whether any of the other programs I've installed are reading my timezone, such as, for example, my matrix client.

So, the solution I came up with: Do a timedatectl set-timezone UTC on the device. I can separately make my desktop clock do a little timezone conversion so no worries about time disorientation. This fixes the issue with most apps not allowing timezone spoofing too.

Honestly, now that I've typed all that^^ out, this is beginning to sound like an unnecessary schizo post that goes WAY beyond my threat model XD. Still, I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on it. Ideas to improve upon it are appreciated too.

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[-] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 6 points 20 hours ago

No, don't do that. Some browsers check if your timezone is in check and if not then they refuse to load HTTPS webpages.

[-] hyacin@lemmy.ml 4 points 17 hours ago

But if you're setting the time to UTC and your time zone to UTC, your time is still accurate. I assumed that was what OP was talking about doing, not just "leave the time as my time but change the time zone."

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Not the browsers fault, but the certificates for transport encryption (like https) don't match with a wrong system time.

[-] ThermonuclearHoxha@hexbear.net 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

The system time is still correct if you're changing the timezone and keeping the appropriate correct time for that timezone

[-] glint@mander.xyz 1 points 18 hours ago

Huh- I haven't experienced any connection problems (yet)

this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
40 points (97.6% liked)

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