I’m not particularly technically knowledgeable so forgive me if this answer is obvious.
If I’m deleting my cookies/browser data, my OS Mac address is random when using vanadium, I’m using a vpn, and, it’s not like I have a vanadium profile I’m logged into, how does the Lumo page “know” that I’ve maxed out the amount of times I’ve used it without having a Lumo profile? Shouldn’t I be unrecognizable to the page?
Other people on the vpn are also using lumo
Probably this. Is the most likely.
Ohhhh…
Interestingly enough, I tried it on incognito mode and I was able to get it to work…which I also can’t figure out why…
Did you by chance read about the recent news where the Aliexpress site plays a silent signal on your speaker output, most likely to fingerprint the device over the unique sound device id or something? If they really really want to know, they can get pretty creative in figuring out who you are without cookies and IPs. Aliexpress is just one example that someone randomly uncovered, who knows what other mischievous methods there are out there that we haven’t even remotely thought of yet.
I believe it. That’s honestly why I keep my sensors and microphone/camera locked out of vanadium. But like you said, there are probably more unknown ways they could find or create identifiers.
Mac address is not visible by websites.
Is your VPN IP always the same?If I’m rotating VPN “locations” that’s changing my VPN IP right?
Yes. You can check it on duckduckgo by searching for “my ip”.
Then, yes I’ve done that.
Browser fingerprinting most likely
I thought Vanadium obscures fingerprinting? Also, shouldn’t deleting data/cookies erase browser identifiers? Also, Lumo is supposed to be a privacy based service, it’s weird that they’d track browser fingerprint identifiers…
Obscuring fingerprinting doesn’t mean eliminating. The ad industry has made browser fingerprinting a very powerful tool and frankly just using a browser like vanadium (with a market share so low it’s probably not measurable) is a huge identifier plus whatever other bits they can grab (like time zone) are probably enough to fingerprint with reasonable accuracy
Browser fingerprinting is identifying a user by inherent information about their environment that is available to the server even without cookies. Stuff like location, OS, browser settings (font size, version, etc) and anything else that they can use as a data point. Combining all of these variables can sometimes be unique enough to identify individual users, within certain contexts.
I don’t know what Vanadium does to protect against this, the usual privacy recommendation is to not adjust any browser settings for personalisation (e.g. dark mode).
