Fauxx is an open-source Android privacy tool that poisons data broker and ad-tech profiles by generating continuous, plausible, off-demographic synthetic activity from your device. The goal is simple: make your real behavioral signal statistically indistinguishable from noise.
Not my project, but though this is really cool and worth sharing.
Why would you not post a link? https://f-droid.org/packages/com.fauxx.full
I wonder if you could set up a second phone that is logged in with all your accounts, then use it for FAUXX, currently concerned about battery usage / background usage of device.
Like, does it need to be running continuously ALL DAY to effectively poison? Or is sometimes usage helpful? Second phone idea solid?
Anyone understand the data collection better have thoughts?
This method wouldn’t combat device fingerprinting, so it would be trivial for everyone but the aggregate data brokers to filter out as noise.
For a strategy like this to work, your legitimate traffic needs to be indistinguishable from the random traffic.
So basically it has to be running while you’re using it, and on the device your primarily use?
not necessarily. if ‘you’ are sending traffic, i (someone interested in your data) don’t really care where it comes from. Em is correct that it’s trivial to filter out, but it’s also another data point that is interesting and potentially relevant for them, so in practice they won’t.
tracking has gotten to the point where they can infer connections based off of users that have no interaction but otherwise share a location for a period of time (think coffee shop wifi, work). you have things in common with those people. maybe not a lot, but enough to be relevant in someone’s dataset somewhere.
so no, it doesn’t have to be running on your primary device to be relevant. i’d argue that it simply being on your home network would be enough.
I just found this app on droidify, really cool idea. Id love to see something similar on Linux. (imnotsure if something like that already exists)
started using it today, it still is in early stages of development and it’s pretty bugged, but it’s very cool.
the main doubt I have now is if it would be more useful of you could fake activity coherent with your location, for example, because being in EU and faking visits to US gov sites doesn’t exactly sound as stealth.
I could be wrong though.
No relation
Isn’t it easier to browse with JavaScript off whenever possible and with uBlock origin?
it’s a difference approach, OP maximizes the data being harvested to make it harder to tell what the real usage data is, turning off javascript minimizes the data being collected but potentially makes you unique and stand out among other vanilla users
just as an FYI, having JavaScript off potentially adds to your fingerprint.
Everything adds to my fingerprint. Nothing minuses to it. No matter what i tried
Ok, but how does it work? Not the faux data generation part detailed on the git (which OP didn’t link btw) but how it injects/intercepts the data.
There are magisk modules for this kind of thing, because what can be faked is severely limited without the ability to mess with other apps or the system.Does it put a local VPN or what?
This is great! I wanted something like this for a long time.
Any suggestions for something similar that runs on a linux desktop?
I used TrackMeNot extension for Firefox in the past, but it has been abandoned and not updated in close to 10 years.
I’d advise switching from Firefox to Mullvad Browser. They have a window size protection tool built in to obfuscate your actual screen size, as well as some other cool goodies.
the window size protection you mention is a firefox feature called RFP and can be enabled on vanilla firefox as well.
I think what you’re looking for is AdNauseam.
AdNauseam works on pages you are visiting, as far as I understood.
Fauxx instead does its thing independently in the background.
Something like this is an interesting approach:
Afaik that won’t really work due to pihole on my network.
That’s cool!
Really cool. The dev is doing Che’s work
Is there an iOS version
