Comparison

The address and what follows it

Changing where a connection comes out is the easy half. The hard half is that a site reads the country from that address and compares it with the clock and the language the browser reports, so the eight usual approaches are set here on that axis.

What an exit address decides

An exit address is not one answer. A site reads the address, the country looked up from it, and the time and language the browser volunteers on its own.

An address with no clock and no language behind it is worse than no address at all. A German exit that reports Tokyo time describes a person nobody has met.

The address
Where the connection comes out, and the only part a proxy changes.
The country read from it
Looked up from public registries, without anyone asking you.
The clock
The time zone the browser reports, compared against that country.
The language list
What the browser asks pages for, sent on every request.

Eight ways on one axis

Rows are the approaches, columns the questions this axis asks. A dash means the approach does not do that thing, not that it does it badly.

The last row is ours. Every cell in it comes from the launch path, and the files behind it are named at the bottom.

	How the exit is set	Reach of one setting	Clock and language follow	Separate exits at once
Ordinary browser, as it is	Through the system settings	Every tab at once	–	One
Incognito window	Whatever the browser around it uses	Every tab at once	–	One
Browser profiles or containers	Shared with the browser around them	Every tab at once	–	One
Spoofing extension	Through the browser's own proxy setting	Every tab at once	Declared in the page, after the start	One
VPN	One tunnel for the machine	Every application on the machine	–	One at a time
Virtual machine per account	Set inside the guest system	That guest system	By hand, inside the guest	One per machine you run
Separate device per account	Its own line or SIM	That device	By hand, on the device	One per device
Browser with the engine patched	A proxy attached to the profile	That profile alone	For countries in its list	One per open profile

How the country is found

The app asks geolocation services through the proxy being measured rather than from your own connection. Asking any other way would measure the wrong machine.

The services are asked in turn and the first answer that parses is taken. That is a first answer rather than an agreed one, and it decides the clock.

Through the proxy
The request leaves by the route the profile is about to use.
Over an encrypted connection
A plain request could be rewritten on the way and name a false country.
Several services
One busy service answering with a refusal must not decide an identity.
Remembered once
The answer is kept on the profile and reused until the address changes.

One rule for every scheme

The proxy reaches the browser as one address, not as a rule for one kind of traffic. A rule written for plain traffic leaves secure traffic going out directly, and that is nearly all of it.

A proxy that is configured but cannot become a usable rule stops the launch. Leaving through your own address while the screen says otherwise is what this product exists to prevent.

One line, every scheme
The same address applies to plain and to secure traffic.
No password on the command line
Credentials travel through a bridge on this machine instead.
No side route around it
Direct peer connections outside the proxy are switched off at launch.
An exit over your own server
A tunnel is raised first, and a tunnel that fails ends in a refusal.

What the clock is built from

The country becomes a time zone and a list of languages from one table, and the first language in it is the one the browser names as its own. Both travel with the profile, in what a page reads and in the headers it never sees.

A few large countries keep a short list of zones of their own, and for those the zone is drawn from the profile's own seed. A hundred profiles on American addresses would otherwise share one clock and link themselves by it.

When the country stays unknown

A proxy whose country cannot be read leaves the profile without a matching clock, and the app says so instead of starting quietly. The country is not remembered and the next launch asks again. A country the table does not cover is the quieter case: no warning is raised, and the clock stays the one the fingerprint drew.

What this comparison does not claim

It does not claim that an exit address hides who you are. It moves where the connection appears to come from, and what you type and post stays yours.
It does not come with addresses. Until you attach a proxy, a profile leaves through your own connection.
It does not claim the clock follows the city or covers every country. The zone comes from the country, and outside the app's own table the profile keeps the clock its fingerprint drew.
It does not claim the country can never be wrong. It comes from outside services, and a service that answers wrongly makes the clock wrong too.
It does not measure other tools. The rows say what each kind of approach can do by its nature, and only the last row comes from code we can open.

How to check

Each line names the file that decides the behaviour and, where there is one, the stand that fails the build when it stops being true.

The exit country is asked through the proxy itself, encrypted, services in turn: apps/desktop/src/lib/exitGeo.js · apps/desktop/test/exit-geo.js
One proxy rule covers every scheme, plain and secure alike: apps/desktop/src/main/main.js · apps/desktop/test/proxy-covers-https.js
The clock and the language list are built from the exit country: packages/shared/src/index.js · apps/desktop/test/fingerprint-card-matches.js
An exit over your own server raises a tunnel first, and a failed tunnel refuses the launch: apps/desktop/src/lib/sshTunnel.js · apps/desktop/test/выход-по-ssh.js

Questions

Why ask the country through the proxy instead of from a server?: Because the question is what the world sees at the far end of that route. A server of ours would report the country of our own machine.
What happens when two services disagree?: They are asked in turn and the first answer that parses wins, so the later ones are never asked. An answer with no country in it is discarded.
Does the proxy cover secure traffic as well?: Yes. The address goes to the browser as one rule covering every scheme, and the stand builds that rule with the launch code rather than reading a setting.
Does my whole machine go through it?: No. Only that profile takes that route, so your mail client and your other windows keep your own connection. For the whole machine, that is what a VPN is for.

What your browser reveals about its route

The leak check reads what leaves your browser past the proxy and sends nothing anywhere.

Download ARMANOS Open the leak check