People think that if they use a VPN, websites won’t be able to tell.
But that doesn’t work on websites with advanced detection systems. They can tell when you are faking your location by scanning your device and browser fingerprint.
If a website is blocking you or throwing a CAPTCHA at you, this is likely why. It can tell that you are trying to fake something.
To figure out why exactly a website is blocking you, you can use online tools like Pixelscan.
Pixelscan shows you exactly what those websites are seeing. You can then fix the issue and rerun the Pixelscan test to see if you’re safe to surf those websites.
In this article, I will show you how to pass Pixelscan using an antidetect browser.
But first, I will explain what is Pixelscan, what it checks, and why you cannot use traditional tools like a VPN to pass its test.
What is Pixelscan and How Does It Check Your Anonymity?
Pixelscan.net is a browser-based fingerprint testing tool similar to Iphey.
The tool allows you to run multiple types of privacy diagnostics. There’s the main fingerprint check, then there are other types of mini tests, such as:
- IP blacklist check
- Proxy checker
- IP address check
- VPN check
- DNS leak test
- Bot verification
- Location info
- WebRTC Leak Test
- Cookie converter
To run the main Pixelscan check, you simply need to visit the Pixelscan.net website and click Scan My Browser. Or you can scroll down and press the big Fingerprint Check button from the list of all checks available.
The test simulates a real-world fingerprinting script, just like how websites do when you visit them. After a few seconds, you get to know whether your fingerprint is consistent or inconsistent.
Pixelscan produces this answer by checking your browser, location, proxy status, fingerprint masking status, and bot status. Each of these 5 checks must result in a positive answer for your browser fingerprint to be consistent.
In other words, your browser fingerprint is termed consistent when those 5 checks result in the following:
- The browser user agent is consistent
- Location is the same as the real location
- No proxy is in use to fake the location
- Fingerprint isn’t being masked
- No bot behavior is detected
Failing any of these checks makes your browser fingerprint inconsistent.
At the bottom of the webpage, Pixelscan provides details about all the fingerprint parameters that it reviewed to produce its result.
Why Websites Perform Fingerprint Checks
Websites process the fingerprints of visitors to distinguish one visitor from another.
The reasons they need to check their fingerprints are to personalize website content for each visitor and block malicious visitors or scrapers.
A fingerprint is built from tens of individual system parameters. Those parameters are taken from the hardware, software, browser, and network.
- IP address
- User agent
- GPU via WebGL
- Audio driver
Screen resolution - RAM
- Color depth
- Timezone
- Languages
- Installed fonts
- Extensions
- Cookie settings
Take any one of these signals individually, and it doesn’t tell you much about a user. Plenty of users share the same screen resolution or timezone, for example.
But when you combine dozens of such data points, you can very likely create a globally unique fingerprint for a user. That is why, when a user makes even a slight change to their fingerprint, they can get caught by websites, because the change might contradict other fingerprint parameters and make the fingerprint inconsistent.
But some users have genuine reasons to fake their fingerprints, and they use special techniques to fool these fingerprint scanners. Let me tell you who they are, what their reasons are, and the fingerprint spoofing tools they use.
Who Needs to Mask Device Fingerprints for Work?
The technique of faking your browser fingerprint is called fingerprint spoofing.
This technique involves not just faking certain parameters of the browser fingerprint, but also doing so in a way that the websites aren’t able to detect the spoofing.
But people don’t just spoof their fingerprints out of boredom. For most fingerprint spoofers, the need arises from the nature of their work.
For example, some people run multiple e-commerce stores for their clients on the same platform using the same device. But some e-commerce platforms don’t allow a user to run more than a certain number of stores.
To evade this rule, those store managers manage each store with a unique browser fingerprint. This sends the impression that the stores are being run from different devices and locations and that their owners are also different individuals.
Another group is data scrapers who use automated scripts to download data from websites. Many websites are against data scraping, and they use anti-bot systems to block these scripts from accessing the websites. To fool these systems, data scrapers attach a human-looking browser fingerprint with their scripts so that these bots look like a regular visitor to the websites.
Note that none of these individuals use traditional tools such as VPNs or other browser extensions to spoof their fingerprints. They use antidetect browsers like Gologin that Pixelscan also recommends.
But why do traditional tools fail at spoofing device fingerprints? Let’s demonstrate using a small example.
Why Traditional Tools Fail Pixelscan Test
Fingerprint scanners can detect spoofing in three ways:
- By finding inconsistent parameters (e.g., IP timezone not matching system clock timezone)
- By finding a unique parameter that makes the fingerprint different from a typical fingerprint (a good fingerprint has to be typical)
- If the browser blocks the scripts of the fingerprint scanner
Let’s show you two examples where this is in play.
I turned on a VPN and changed my location to Dallas, US.
The Pixelscan fingerprint check detected that my timezone is spoofed and that I am using a proxy. This is the first technique at play.
Pixelscan compared the IP’s timezone with the timezone on my system clock and found them inconsistent. In the screenshot below, notice the difference in time from JS (actual time) vs. time from IP (Dallas time).
Based on this, it also concluded that I am using a proxy to fake my location and thus my fingerprint is also spoofed.
Now, let’s show you another example where Pixelscan flagged my fingerprint as inconsistent because the VPN extension I was using was blocking a fingerprinting script that Pixelscan was running.
At first, I was confused about this because I wasn’t spoofing my fingerprint at that time. Even the VPN was turned off. The fingerprint parameters at the bottom of the test also looked fine.
I found the cause when I ran the Bot Detection Test by Pixelscan, and the result was “Bot Behavior Detected.”
For some reason, the VPN extension I was using was suppressing navigator.share(), which is an API that’s normally missing in bots, so Pixelscan read its absence as bot behavior.
I disabled the VPN extension in my browser settings and reran the Pixelscan test, and my fingerprint was declared as consistent.
So, you need to be wary of the browser extensions that you use, even if you aren’t spoofing your fingerprint deliberately.
How Gologin Ensures a Consistent Pixelscan Status
So, how do the individuals who need fingerprint spoofing fool these systems?
For instance, how can a person using a VPN or proxy hide that fact from websites?
We mentioned earlier that Pixelscan recommends using antidetect browsers like Gologin. These browsers let you manually or automatically change all fingerprint parameters so you can remove inconsistencies.
They also allow you to create multiple browser profiles, each of which gets its own spoofed fingerprint.
Let’s show you how to pass Pixelscan using a spoofed fingerprint in Gologin.
1. Download Gologin for your operating system and install it
2. Sign up and log in to your Gologin account
3. Press Add Profile and give the new profile a name
4. In the Proxy tab, select Gologin Proxy and pick a country and proxy type (use Residential for best results). Or, if you have proxies from your own provider, select Your Proxy and add the credentials. For this test, I am using Gologin’s built-in proxy from the country “United Kingdom.”
5. Although it’s recommended to use the same OS as your original one (which is Windows 11, in my case), let’s test Gologin’s capabilities by changing my operating system to Windows 10.
6. Click Create Profile
7. Click Run to launch the profile. A browser window will open that looks like Chrome
8. Head to Pixelscan.net and run the test inside this new browser profile
The result comes back consistent.
The reason Gologin passes Pixelscan is that the timezone tab in Gologin is preset based on the geolocation of your proxy server.
Your system clock, language, WebRTC, and geolocation are all configured around the same IP from the start.
Look at the screenshots below. Several fingerprint parameters are set to change based on the IP.
This was simple fingerprint spoofing. You can stress-test Gologin by implementing a more custom fingerprint, and that will also bypass Pixelscan.
Start using Gologin today and stay undetected online.
Download Gologin for free and manage multiple accounts without bans!
FAQs
What causes an Inconsistent flag on a Pixelscan check?
Pixelscan declares the fingerprint as inconsistent due to the following reasons:
- Mismatch between two or more fingerprint parameters
- Fingerprint scripts are being blocked by the browser
- Unique fingerprint characteristics
Can a standard VPN pass the Pixelscan test?
No. A standard VPN simply changes your IP address to one from its own server. Your system clock’s timezone still follows your actual location, which helps Pixelscan detect VPN usage.
