What is randrss?

Normal RSS readers usually fetch all feeds more or less at the same time at constant intervals. Anyone who monitors internet traffic can look for this pattern and therefore identify users.

In contrast, randrss fetches all your feeds at random intervals and also at an random order. The feeds will be downloaded and you then serve them using your own web server. It poorly attemps to look like normal browsers while fetching the feeds, and uses Tor by default.

This has several advantages. You don't need to worry how your client deals with cookies for example. Since you point your favorite RSS client to randrss's downloaded feeds, you avoid certain trackers like google's feed proxy and cloudflare. They may identify you across devices as it is very likely that the combination of feeds you read is unique. In the context of "hardening", this is also useful to restrict the servers your RSS client can contact (for instance, by using network namespaces or qsni).

A drawback of this approach is that the time you get new feeds is delayed, but that should be acceptable. Furthermore, this tool might leave a distinct signature itself. It should still be better than fetching everything at once, however it's primary purpose is to hide you from the mentioned (potential) trackers.

Usage

Fetchers

Scripts that request the feeds while trying to look like a normal client. By default, they are launched with "torsocks".

Config file

For each feed, an individual config file is used.

Example: A simple example config file for kernel.org:

FEED_URL="https://www.kernel.org/feeds/kdist.xml"
FEED_OUTPUT="/var/www/feeds/kernelreleases.feed"

Launch

randrss [path to directory containing the config files] [fetchersfile]

fetchersfile: take a look at the example file in the repo. It lists the paths to the fetchers that will randomly be used.

optional third parameter: "syncnow". Do not sleep for random intervals. Fetch all feeds and exit.