This is pretty much spot on what Edward Snowden described for his vision of digital identity.
Contextual Identities on the Web
121–130 of 140 posts
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#122Very cool. I think I'd love to be able to define which domains open in which contexts so if I click a link that happens to be to something I want in other context ... But that got me thinking just how effective will this be? If someone sends me a link in fb and I click it. Even if it opens in a new context it seems like it's only a matter of time before all the links are changed to https://destsite.com/path/to/resour…
Well, there's an Add-on to prevent the latter:
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#123Ah yes, thank you, finally!
I can't emphasize enough how much I've been waiting for this.
I've even tried pushing it via the dev-tools uservoice as a developer tool instead of a privacy tool, since you often need to test with multiple sessions at the same time. No reaction.
There is still the very real issue of fingerprinting across containers, which they point at towards the end of the article, but this might just be enough for me to drop Chrome completely and get my Firefox set up again the way I like it.
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#124If we can get Tor Browser's first party origin feature in as well, this will be fantastic! I would love to have the ability to type www.facebook.com and get a context that isn't linked to the rest of my tabs. I also want ephemeral containers so I could open a tab that forgets its cookies when I'm done. Think private browsing but without forgetting my history, requiring a new window, or being limited to one context at…
I prototyped this feature last year as an intern at Mozilla. I think the engineering done for containers can be exposed in a lot of cool ways to the user. I'd love for you to send in your ideas on the comment form [1]. One of the features we considered last summer was "site specific containers" [2], which would support your facebook example. [1] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1oQN14TUnqj-MDErp8MKxH_v7Ytt... [2] http…
Is it possible to implement this feature via the extension API ? Exposing the low-levels, like choosing the cookie jar or intercepting calls to the local storage, would sprawl some really good privacy-enhancing extensions.
EDIT: Looks like there are already extensions doing that ! nice !
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#125This could not be more welcome at a time when facebook (UK) is displaying a new bar across the top of its page saying that by using it, I agree: "By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies." I already have a separate chromium "person" set up for facebook; might give firefox another go when this gets released.
I don't mean to tell people how they should and shouldn't use the web, but if you disagree with Facebook's off-platform data-collection practices, consider sending them a message about it and closing your account. They have no reason to change their policies unless we give them concrete evidence that it will hurt their business.
They track out even if you don't have an account. They have no reason to change their policies, because you cannot hurt their business enough as a user (you're the product, not the customer).
The only reasonable option, if one cares, is to use disconnect/ghostery/abp with the right lists, etc.
In case you are not aware: Every single web page that has a 'facebook like' button reports your surfing habits to Facebook, whether you have an account or not.
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#126Digital marketing companies are moving to reduce or eliminate their dependence on cookies for identifying users, so unless they add some Tor-like functionality to this tool that makes you appear to be connecting from a different IP address, I don't see this having much of a long-term privacy impact.
That said, no need to volunteer any more information than necessary to use online services.
If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check out https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that Firefox profile management is not user-friendly at all. I have an advice for you though, you don't need to open Firefox from a terminal if you want to be able to choose your profile at start-up. «all» you have to do is go to ~/.mozilla/firefox/profile.ini and change it with: ``` [General] StartWithLastProfile=0 ``` Now Firefox will open a dialogue box at start-up asking you for the profile you want to us…
Alternately, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments -P " " Starts with a given profile name (profile name is case sensitive). -no-remote Enables running multiple instances of the application with different profiles; [1] used with -P #!/bin/bash case "$1" in personal | work | banking | shopping) firefox -no-remote -P "$1" ;; *) echo "unknown arg: $1"; return 1; ;; esac and either rename profile directories,…
You an also manage your Firefox profiles using the about:profiles page.
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#128This is a great step in the right direction -- though it is not enough. Different identities would still be going through the same IP (not much one can do about that). But some things that can be solved are NOT addressed with containers:
- everything panopticlick uses (fonts list, plugin lists, timezone, agent, etc.)
- everything panopticlick doesn't use, but the bad guys do (aa font signatures, ...)
- plugin abuse - e.g., Flash 'cookies', Silverlight 'isolated storage', Java JNLP properties
- see EverCookie[0] for more things that have been known to occur in the wild (and remember it is outdated). the article mentions cache is not shared, but e.g. HSTS pinning is. evercookie easily pierces through this system.
Since 2005 or so, I have had different users for different purposes; Not sure how well it works on Windows these days (it used to not work at all back in 2005) - but on Linux, it's just a "sux - otheruser" or "sudo -u otheruser" command away, and it is well isolated on the web side[1]
[0] https://samy.pl/evercookie/
[1] Full X11 isolation requires a lot more effort - but luckily it seems that recent browsers don't let websites abuse that
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#129I prefer to use separate browser instances with different --user-data-dir (in chrome, i dont know the equivalent in firefox). Adding a different color theme helps to immediately discriminate betwen them.
Having tabs from different contexts in the same window is confusing.
Re: Contextual Identities on the Web
#130If we can get Tor Browser's first party origin feature in as well, this will be fantastic! I would love to have the ability to type www.facebook.com and get a context that isn't linked to the rest of my tabs. I also want ephemeral containers so I could open a tab that forgets its cookies when I'm done. Think private browsing but without forgetting my history, requiring a new window, or being limited to one context at…
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