Google has revealed that upcoming versions of the Chrome browser will integrate a new feature called IP protection. It is a tool that changes the public IP address with which each user presents itself to remote web servers. This means that rather than revealing the real address assigned by your provider (try typing what is my ip i.e. what is my IP in the Google search box…), the browser allows you to exit onto the Internet by passing through a proxy server. The server proxy “masks” the IP address assigned by the telecommunications operator to the user and exposes his.
How the Chrome proxy works
The functionality built into Chrome will behave like a classic proxy server. In another article we saw the differences between proxies and VPNs. As it explains on GitHub, Google’s idea is to make it more complex user tracking starting from the collection of the IP address. IP protection can certainly help but alone it does not allow you to avoid the activities of tracking. Fingerprinting is an approach that allows you to recognize users between one session and another, regardless of the IP address used, without even resorting to the use of cookies.
L’anonymity while browsing the Web can only be achieved by using solutions such as Tor Browser which use a multi-level encryption system, applied by each onion router crossed by data packets.
In any case, Chrome’s IP protection will be introduced and updated in several phases: initially a small circle of browser users will be involved and then the initiative will be extended to a wider audience. In the next phases, Google plans to implement a system consisting of due proxy, one operated by the Mountain View company, the other by an external service that provides CDN tools. The goal is to prevent proxies from having visibility into both the client’s real IP address and the destination address.
The CONNECT and CONNECT-UDP commands allow you to concatenate proxies while the end-to-end encrypted tunnel established between the Chrome browser and the destination server would allow you to rely on an adequate level of security and privacy.
Since many online services implement mechanisms to geolocalize IPs and estimate the physical location of each user, Google plans to use proxy connections that represent an “approximate” location of the client rather than the real one.
According to what was revealed, Google plans to add the new feature between Chrome 119 and Chrome 225.
