this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
23 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48328 readers
659 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I usually use Tor Browser to scan files online for viruses, which I then send to Windows users (I use Linux) if they are clean.

Lately, I've noticed that the User Agent in TOR is showing up as Linux, when it used to show up as Windows.

Is this a problem with my system or a change made by the TOR team? The fact that Linux has far fewer users increases fingerprinting.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 8 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Does it increase fingerprinting? I imagine there might be some non-user-agent way to determine the OS. Like with image handling or whatever.

It's probably more unique and suspicious for a linux browser to pretend to be Windows than a Linux system disclosing itself as Linux.

Pretty sure the TOR user agent is just default firefox, by design. It's very easy to detect OS with very rudimentary fingerprinting techniques, a lot of which are blocked by the TOR browser but they can never get them all.