Browsing history for a new profile

Every fingerprint answer can be correct and the profile still shows. A browser someone has actually used carries cookies from sites they never think about, entries in history, cached files, favicons and a pile of stored preferences.

It is the same shape as an incognito window: right on paper, empty behind. A VPN changes the address you arrive from and nothing about the jar, and a virtual machine hands you the same emptiness one level up.

The robot spends time in the profile before you do. It opens ordinary public pages, lets them set their own cookies, scrolls, waits and moves on.

The robot opens your profile the ordinary way: its own fingerprint, its own proxy, its own storage folder, inside ARMANOS Browser when the fork is installed. Cookies land the way cookies always land, set by the site, in the profile's own session.

The robot has no engine of its own. It rides the same engine the flows you built run on, so the queue, the Cancel button and the line in the task centre are the ones you already know.

Every address gets the same six steps, and the timing is a range rather than a number. The seconds you pick are the centre: a real pause comes out between 60 and 140 percent of it, and the scroll depth differs each time too.

1. 1

   Open

   Navigate to the address and wait for the load event, with a twenty second ceiling.

2. 2

   Settle

   A short random pause so scripts and images finish before anything touches the page.

3. 3

   Scroll

   Move down 400 to 1100 pixels, the way a person skims the top of a page.

4. 4

   Read

   A second random pause, the longest share of the dwell so far.

5. 5

   Scroll again

   Another 300 to 1200 pixels further down.

6. 6

   Leave

   A final pause, then the next address.

Every profile gets its own selection and its own order, not one shared by the run. Launch nine profiles into one run and you get nine different lists in nine different orders.

Two profiles that visited the same nine sites in the same order inside the same minute have traded one correlator for another. So the app shuffles the pool with Fisher-Yates: sorting by a random comparator favours some orders over others.

We check the shuffle by drawing the first position six hundred times. No address takes more than fifteen percent of those draws, and at least sixty percent of the pool comes up first at some point.

• Which addresses

  Drawn from the groups you ticked, or from your own list.

• In what order

  Its own for every profile in the run, not one order for all.

• How long on each

  Three pauses per page, each one its own length.

• How far down each page

  Two scrolls per visit, each one its own depth.

Six groups, thirty addresses, all https, none repeated between groups. Nothing in the pool needs an account: a robot that lands on a sign-in wall produces no history at all, plus a run of failed sessions.

Tick the groups that match what the profile is for. A shop profile can lean on shopping and search, a social profile on video and forums, and anything you untick is never touched.

You pick 3, 5, 8, 12, 20 or 30 sites and 10 to 90 seconds on each, and the defaults are 8 and 20. Even around the window nobody can ask for more than 40 sites or more than 300 seconds each, so a run that never ends is not on offer.

You see the time before you start: the addresses times the seconds on each, plus three seconds per navigation. Profiles run one after another, so the window names both the per-profile figure and the total you will wait.

The number you ask for and the number available are two different things. The Search group holds four addresses while the window offers twenty, so asking for twenty from that group means four.

The promise and the run agree. The window names the addresses available and that is exactly how many get visited: asking for more than the ticked groups hold is not possible.

We check the promised minutes against the real ones, and we do it on the working part of the app that counts your run rather than on a description of it.

Everything happens in the profile list: one profile from its card menu, or several at once with Cookie robot in the bulk bar. The dialog names the profile, or says how many are selected.

You can keep working while it runs. The profiles it drives are open browser windows, so leave them alone until the task centre says the run is finished.

1. 1

   Attach the proxy first

   History collected through the wrong exit is worse than no history.

2. 2

   Open the dialog

   Cookie robot in the card menu, or Cookie robot in the bulk bar with several profiles ticked.

3. 3

   Choose what to browse

   Tick groups, or paste your own addresses, one per line.

4. 4

   Set the size

   How many sites and how many seconds on each, with the estimate updating as you change them.

5. 5

   Start and leave it

   Watch the task centre, cancel any time, sign in after it finishes.