Block Fingerprinting with Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#221

Post by sebazzz » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

dessant wrote: post #94

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

Remember that reCAPTCHA v1 used to be noble: reading books and converting them to text.

Now you're just training many Google machine learning algorithms by classifying data. In which they get more useful for the consumer, thus more powerful.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#222

Post by kabacha » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #208

I've used this feature in the past. There are some weirdneses. You lose your timezone and ALL dates appear in UTC. This is definitely not desirable. Fingerprinting cannot be allowed for some sites, and thus things like android messages cannot work because it cannot accurately identify the browser. Hopefully they'll do something about all this.

> You lose your timezone and ALL dates appear in UTC.

Seems like an easy fix would be to have client based converter, even more simple than what fingerprint blocker does with screen resolution.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#223

Post by kabacha » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:25 AM UTC

OhHeyItsE wrote: post #135

chrisshroba wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious follow-up: I've always been fairly apathetic towards companies tracking me because I don't see too many plausible situations that would end up truly affecting me negatively. Do you have any examples (preferably that have happened in the past, but hypothetical are okay too) of what can go wrong if the tracking information falls in the wrong hands? Sure, street addresses, SSN's, credit card numbers would be bad…

Hypothetical: individual pricing based on how likely you are to pay more for an item, or how badly they think you need it. Sharing of data across domains could place you in a "bubble" where you see the same price no matter where you look.

That's exactly what a lot of airline websites do. If you're an active user of one try firing up a clean instance of different browser and it's very likely you'll see a different price.

For products that can benefit from information asymmetry[1] fingerprints are an amazing tool.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#224

Post by Mathnerd314 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

rhaksw wrote: post #207

I've had some issues maintaining reVddit.com while keeping Firefox's tracking protection in mind. I'd love some help if there is anyone who can provide insight. Basically, you can't load reVddit pages on Firefox because reVddit accesses reddit's API, and reddit is listed on Firefox's list of websites that are considered trackers [1]. In my uneducated opinion, this list is weird. I had some discussion about this with…

There is a similar bug in Bugzilla for redditp.com, open since 2015: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1235978

My general impression is that tracking protection is low-priority for Mozilla and anyone who actually cares is using uBlock Origin / uMatrix or similar extensions since those use filter lists that are actually updated.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#225

Post by ddffre » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

What about them selling their data on the darkweb?

They claimed that there was no breach, but yet all of their database is being sold on the darkweb.

Is it so easy to gather their database and publish it?

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#226

Post by godelski » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

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.

They have a monthly subscription for donations[0]. You can't expect them to switch over until they meet a certain threshold.

[0] https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?utm_source=foundation.mozi...

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#227

Post by pstch » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

qiqitori wrote: post #171

wybiral wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if these fingerprint checks look for the more stealthy and sinister approaches, like localhost port scanning [1] and specific CSS selector behavior...? [1] https://twitter.com/davywtf/status/1132026581038190592

There's so much fingerprinting that can't really be disabled. Think about it: Performance - Single-threaded CPU performance - Multi-threaded CPU performance - WebGL performance - Video performance - Network performance (how long does it take to transfer data to various locations, what's the lag, is the lag consistent, etc.) - (Maybe) Time it takes to execute certain JavaScript functions User behavior - How does the u…

True, in the current situation, we can only "limit" fingerprinting. This is the result of the characteristics of the sandbox we use for the Web. Remove Javascript, and most of these problems go away.

This is why I stay attached to making simple HTTP apps that don't require JS, but this is clearly not the direction the web is going at this time.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#228

Post by eVeechu7 » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:32 AM UTC

ddffre wrote: post #225

What about them selling their data on the darkweb? They claimed that there was no breach, but yet all of their database is being sold on the darkweb. Is it so easy to gather their database and publish it?

Who is them? Whose database?

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#229

Post by godelski » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:34 AM UTC

thethirdone wrote: post #100

ademup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They have on their donations a monthly donation. That's hassle free. You can also donate to them through Amazon smile.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#230

Post by nsomaru » Fri, May 31, 2019, 5:34 AM UTC

vidyesh wrote: post #203

securityfreak wrote: post #84

All of this is fantastic. I just hope the day comes, when Google is no longer the default search engine in Firefox. Safari is my default browser, but I use Firefox heavily for “social” media accounts. I love the extensions.

You can change the default to any other search engine you want. Just a few clicks away.

In the context, most users do not change the default