Before posting this, I searched the Whonix wiki for “fake name generator” and “fake name” but found no relevant topics.
As many of you know, there are numerous websites for generating fake names. However, in my experience, very few meet the criteria for being trustworthy or reliable, and their quality tends to degrade over time. Below are the main issues I have encountered with online fake name generators:
Requires Javascript to function (cant use with disabled)
Triggers Capatchas “just a moment” crapflare or outright blocking
Contain Google trackers, fonts and or other unwanted background connections and scripts
Sites that previously worked fine no longer work due to one of the above
Having a local fake name generator that can be invoked via the command line would be a valuable addition for Whonix users. It should go without saying that making outbound network connections simply to generate a fake name for form fields is generally bad depending on threat model. Not that whonix or anyone associated recommends this.
A tool that outputs directly to stdout would not create persistent data unless the user explicitly redirects it to a file, which is the obviously preferable behavior.
The python3 library it uses is called python3-fake-factory and they have lots of other useful options within this topic.
The tool is commonly used for faking database files and anonymizing data, it would be a lie to say its not used for this case.
Faker is a Python package that generates fake data for you. Whether you need to bootstrap your database, create good-looking XML documents, fill-in your persistence to stress test it, or anonymize data taken from a production service, Faker is for you.
Faker is heavily inspired by PHP Faker, Perl Faker, and by Ruby Faker.
It goes hand in hand with other tools whonix provides. Why are other tools pre-bundled with whonix that are there to improve privacy/OPSEC that people may or may not use. Is a client tool really that much bloat or too much to ask for?