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Browser Fingerprinting

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Re: Browser Fingerprinting

#41
post #12

In Firefox, you can control a lot via the `about:config` directives. You can put all that into a `user.js` for portability and reference, like this: https://github.com/delight-im/Secure-Firefox But unfortunately, there are so many things that can contribute to identification of your browser, and many of them cannot reasonably be blocked. The important section of the Chromium list is "(2) Machine-specific characterist…

Privacy is not easy. Please don't adopt this tagline. This quick catchphrase is the shortest path to lies. This kind of thinking basically helps powerful people erode the idea that they are not entitled to anybody's personal details. Privacy is as easy as not shooting yourself in the foot. You just have to not point the gun at your foot.

It is easy not to shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have a gun.

Privacy and convenience are at two ends of a spectrum. Commerce likes to exploit this by making things more "convenient", generally at the cost of privacy. Sadly, the majority of consumers care far more about convenience than the often hidden costs of lack of privacy.

Re: Browser Fingerprinting

#42
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is not easy. Please don't adopt this tagline. This quick catchphrase is the shortest path to lies. This kind of thinking basically helps powerful people erode the idea that they are not entitled to anybody's personal details. Privacy is as easy as not shooting yourself in the foot. You just have to not point the gun at your foot.

It is easy not to shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have a gun. Privacy and convenience are at two ends of a spectrum. Commerce likes to exploit this by making things more "convenient", generally at the cost of privacy. Sadly, the majority of consumers care far more about convenience than the often hidden costs of lack of privacy.

That's great.

It's still a bullshit catchphrase, empty as any buzzword.

Re: Browser Fingerprinting

#44
post #5

Is there a way to easily change (some) browser plugins every five minutes, so fingerprinting becomes useless?

On Chrome you can use this[0] user-agent spoofer(one example) It will randomize your user agent for each session, thus changing your fingerprint. I'm sure there are various other extensions that do similar things that randomize the parameters of whatever is used to fingerprint you. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/random-user-agent/...

That will set off some fraud detection on sites as there will be mismatch between user agent and the browser being used. You can easily profile the DOM and Javascript features to figure out what browser a person is using.

Re: Browser Fingerprinting

#45
post #34
post #24

Mozilla and Tor devs are currently working on upstreaming some Tor Browser patches[0] that reduce fingerprinting surface. E.g. cookie isolation based the domain shown in the URL bar[1] and making canvas readback opt-in[2] [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift/Tracking [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=967895

What about these? https://www.browserleaks.com/firefox https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=863246 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903959

Hence the "E.g."

Re: Browser Fingerprinting

#46
post #31
post #12

In Firefox, you can control a lot via the `about:config` directives. You can put all that into a `user.js` for portability and reference, like this: https://github.com/delight-im/Secure-Firefox But unfortunately, there are so many things that can contribute to identification of your browser, and many of them cannot reasonably be blocked. The important section of the Chromium list is "(2) Machine-specific characterist…

There is one more called Firefox Debloat: https://github.com/amq/firefox-debloat/ ... though it hasn't been recently updated. We are developing `gngr` in the belief that privacy should be engineered into the browser, not worked around: https://github.com/UprootLabs/gngr

A new browser, neat!

Offtopic: I am looking for a cross-platform browser written in Go(lang) even though the GUI stuff is just getting started there.

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