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Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#91

Post by ademup »

ChrisSD wrote: post #57
ngokevin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of funny though, the vast majority of Mozilla's money comes from the ads and tracking industry, just one step removed.

The irony is they tried diversifying their income. But people don't want their browser to ask for donations (that's nagging). They don't want their new tab page pre-populated with websites on a new install (even if their browsing overwrites them). They don't want "fun" additions to advertise TV shows (even if they're opt-in). But they're happy to pay via google's search and tracking. Mozilla doesn't have a lot of opt…

Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017.

I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#92

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #46
xvector wrote: post #15

Can someone paste their results (or at least bits of fingerprinting entropy) from https://panopticlick.eff.org with the latest Firefox? With the fancy new anti-fingerprinting Safari on macOS Mojave I get just over 14.5 bits of entropy with the most entropic source being my canvas fingerprint (1 in 600). With Safari on iOS I get 11.71 bits of entropy, with the most entropic value being my screen size and color depth.

17.62 bits on firefox, 11.0 on Tor, 17.63 on chrome. On firefox, the big contributors are HTTP headers (my native language is announced), hash of WebGl fingerprint and time zone. On Tor big contributors are hash of webGL fingerprint, screen size. On chrome, they are system fonts, hash of canvas fingerprint, user agent, and time zone. I am not too concerned about the fingerprinting in firefox since I have strict block…

The numbers don't make much sense to me. On FF I get 14.05 with NoScript active. Curiously the headers increase from 1.68 bits to 3.47 when NoScript is running.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#93

Post by dmos62 »

messe wrote: post #63
samirm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 9.93 bits of identifying information. with this new setting turned on + uBlock Origin + NoScript

If you haven't already, change your user agent to get it down further.

Following this advice, I discovered an extension that automatically spoofs the user agent and does some other things. Haven't tested yet, but it seems to be actively maintained.

Since I'm on the topic, other two lesser known extension I have are CanvasBlocker (fakes canvas fingerprinting (or disables it)) and Privacy Badger (heuristically detects and disables trackers; complements ublock).

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#94

Post by dessant »

Google's reCAPTCHA makes it impossible to use large portions of the web once you take reasonable measures to protect your privacy. The challenge will continuously fail, despite you spending time to carefully solve it. This cruel behavior is described in a patent [1] by Kyle Adams of Juniper Networks.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9407661

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#95

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

messe wrote: post #63
samirm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 9.93 bits of identifying information. with this new setting turned on + uBlock Origin + NoScript

If you haven't already, change your user agent to get it down further.

You have to stick with known popular user agents. To mitigate tracking by UA you need a randomized user agent that changes periodically. Panopticlick won't be able to account for that in its stats. It's not a good idea to switch UA on every request since it will be hard to diagnose breakage caused by a site that rejects particular UAs.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#96

Post by scarejunba »

roca wrote: post #40
ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

It also reduces incentives to actually make moves that benefit privacy. Because if the people who say they care about privacy aren't going to support you, why bother?

Nah, the people who care are happy. The problem is the guys who like to talk. It's the same with security. There's like an army of people who've learned about it from internet commentary exclusively and they bluster a lot as a substitute for competence.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#98

Post by core-questions »

dmos62 wrote: post #71
ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

> always-negative/outrage attitude That's a meaningful insight. I think Web is in a place now where anyone with technical insight is frustrated. Yes, frustration is the right word. And confused. And it's this mix of confusion and frustration that has people going around bad mouthing all browsers, or at least I think so. Mozilla Firefox is the only significant browser that has the economic incentives to take care of p…

Vote with your dollars and your eyeballs, and retreat from the parts of the Web that are abusing you and everyone else. You lived fine before Facebook and Instagram, you can live fine without them now.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#99

Post by hulahoof »

user17843 wrote: post #44
xvector wrote: post #15

Can someone paste their results (or at least bits of fingerprinting entropy) from https://panopticlick.eff.org with the latest Firefox? With the fancy new anti-fingerprinting Safari on macOS Mojave I get just over 14.5 bits of entropy with the most entropic source being my canvas fingerprint (1 in 600). With Safari on iOS I get 11.71 bits of entropy, with the most entropic value being my screen size and color depth.

Firefox Fingerprinting protection has nothing to do with real fingerprinting protection, and does not afffect panopticlick results in any way. It just bloocks a couple of known scripts based on the disconnect list. Of course they don't tell us in their marketing posts.

Resist fingerprinting will also stop sensor data (e.g. accelerometer) from being exposed on mobile, which can be used to identify[1].

You can verify if it's exposed on this site[2].

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/android-and-ios-devices-impact... [2] http://www.albertosarullo.com/demos/accelerometer/

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#100

Post by thethirdone »

ademup wrote: post #91
ChrisSD wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is they tried diversifying their income. But people don't want their browser to ask for donations (that's nagging). They don't want their new tab page pre-populated with websites on a new install (even if their browsing overwrites them). They don't want "fun" additions to advertise TV shows (even if they're opt-in). But they're happy to pay via google's search and tracking. Mozilla doesn't have a lot of opt…

Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017. I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.

> Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017

I think nearly everyone would be willing to pay the ~$2/year to use Firefox if all browsers weren't free.

At that price, the main reason not to pay is the hassle rather than just downloading.

Thanks for the context about the revenue of Firefox. I had never given it any though.

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