[vieinfernale]

I'm quite disenchanted here. So this means that it is practically impossible to avoid IP fingerprints in any way ? Even with Tor, VMs, etc ? You'll always be at the mercy of whoever runs the show unless you own the physical servers

[semiquaver]

Of course a backbone provider can directly inspect the source and destination IP addresses of any traffic transiting its network. How could it be otherwise? Thats not fingerprinting, it’s just pulling fields out of a struct.

Tor does defeat this though. Rather than seeing the true destination of your traffic they see that of a Tor exit node.

[londons_explore]

But... That tor exit node then sends the traffic onwards... Again via the internet, and the backbone provider can inspect it again.

Seeing a packet heading to a tor exit node and then a similarly sized packet heading onwards a fraction of a millisecond later is a pretty surefire way to spy on individual tor users.

[miohtama]

The physical servers do not matter. Someone owns the physical cable.