So a bit ago I got an add for “canned rambutan”. I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn’t using a VPN at the time and I didn’t have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.
Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?
- Wikipedia
- Startpage Search
- Duckduckgo Search
- My ISP
- Firefox
- My Firefox Extensions
- Kubuntu
- CachyOS
- The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
- I must’ve forgotten a mention of it elsewhere?
Any guesses as to where the weak link is?
Reverse DNS would only show domain name, not URL. And even then a lot of websites are sharing IPs. No point in doing that when you’ve got SNI.
True only domain. TIL about sni. But vpn still protect against sni analysis no?
With a VPN it’s the VPN that has access to the list of domain you visit instead of your ISP. Whether you should put your trust in your ISP or a VPN is another question.