Just trying to get a consensus if this is a good idea or a bad idea.
There’s a python script on GitHub called “Noisy” and you can run it in the background to generate random clicks on websites. It uses a random “user agent” from a large list and includes a list of domains you can add to in the config. It generates random clicks on links on the websites in the list and has wait time between them, etc, etc. Sort of just generates random web traffic.
Anyways … I run my own VPN on a VPS and I use it for just general privacy and a DNS server. My threat assessment doesn’t include much. I just thought it would be funny to run the python script on my VPS at random times and let it just generate random traffic from random user agents and that way it sort of obscures me being the only VPN user and makes the traffic less valuable. I’m assuming this can’t hurt but even if it doesn’t help all that much, is there any reason you could think it would be a bad idea? If anything it would build up my DNS cache if I added hundreds of domains to the list
If the domains tested use anti DDoS or bot protection, those protection may figure out your VPS is only making random requests instead of actually visiting (browser visit will execute the embedded scripts), then tag your IP as potential bot/scraper, which in turn gets you more captcha to solve or even outright block depending on the sites protection setting.
If you want your DNS cache fresh, use unbound with prefetch.
Yeah that’s a fair take. It’s really meant to simulate a “normal user” just browsing the web but I liked that it used random user agents so all the data linked to that IP wasn’t always from the same phone and browser. I guess a technique to possibly reduce fingerprinting? Although I know fingerprinting is pretty advanced at this point so maybe it wouldn’t idk
User agent is an incredibly unreliable method of identification. It only says what browser is being used and it’s perfectly feasible that a small group of people will all be using the same browser and OS.
Most sites that use fingerprinting will just use cookies or some other method.
As the other commenter said, you also run the risk of being identified as a bot.
Cool thanks. This is the feedback I was looking for. I thought there was some user agent info that was pretty susceptible to help fingerprinting but maybe I’m thinking of something else. Thanks
Not really, all a user agent does is identify the browser and the OS and sometimes the device itself… There are millions of windows/Mac/Linux computers running chrome/edge/Firefox/brave… I’ll be your devices are some combination of them.