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Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

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Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#11

Post by MrScurt »

noizejoy wrote: post #7

I’ve been following privacy issues and technology for a while, but haven’t come across a foundational discussion of (a) the merits of and (b) technical implementations of different approaches to avoid fingerprinting: “hiding” vs “blending in”(making me look identical to countless others - maybe even randomizing who I look like in a smart way). I wonder if any subject area experts reading this thread would be willing…

There are countless add-ons to stop fingerprinting, ad-tracking, disable WebRTC, and force things such as HTTPS. As you've touched on above, these add-ons can be used as unique identifiers to attach your activity to your 'profile'.

Just a thought: I think the route Mozilla is taking is where the industry is heading. More open-source/transparency means more privacy protections for the user. If we get to the point where every browser has built in security features, fingerprinting becomes more of a challenge.

Websites themselves could provide the functionality of a data broker. I am perfectly okay if I get suggested products by a company that already has my data.

In my honest opinion, the current landscape is more than hostile towards the average user and needs immediate course correction.

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#12

Post by mcphage »

arkadiyt wrote: post #3

Reposting from the other [1] thread: Basically Safari keeps track of which domains are being requested in a 3rd party context (i.e. I load example.com in my browser and the page loads the facebook sdk - Safari increments a counter for facebook by 1). Once a given domain reaches 3 hits, Safari will strip cookies and some other data in 3rd party requests to that domain. The problem is that advertisers can use this to f…

Based on that, won't the presence of facebook on the ITP list mean either you go to Facebook, or that you've been to multiple sites that have checked if you go to Facebook? ie, won't these techniques soon end up with all false positives?

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#13

Post by wiredfool »

robertoandred wrote: post #9
nattaylor wrote: post #6

Conversely, Chrome is heading in the right direction: >Chrome plans to more aggressively restrict fingerprinting across the web. One way in which we’ll be doing this is reducing the ways in which browsers can be passively fingerprinted, so that we can detect and intervene against active fingerprinting efforts as they happen. [0] This will include things like restricting the volume of Browser API checks allowed, etc,…

Chrome is just trying to start catching up to where Safari and Firefox are.

Chrome is restricting fingerprinting, but they still ship google analytics in the browser itself so it's harder to block.

They'll only really block fingerprinting in their browser when they have no use for it.

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#14

Post by strbean »

qmmmur wrote: post #8
lmkg wrote: post #5

There is a fundamental difficulty when trying to implement privacy: A limit on the disclosure of information is itself a disclosure of information. A good privacy design needs to confront this issue directly. Sometimes there's nothing to be done. I think in some cases it's mathematically unsolvable (cf. Cynthia Dwork's paper on Differential Privacy). But an explicit consideration can at least surface some trade-offs.…

It makes me think of password requirements. Isn't it bad to earmark a password as requiring certain things rather than to let the possibilities be completely open?

Some day we'll start seeing password requirements like:

> Your password must be exactly 6 characters

> The first character must be one of: a, b, c, d

> The second character must be one of: !@#$

> ...

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#15

Post by sroussey »

wiredfool wrote: post #13
robertoandred wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is just trying to start catching up to where Safari and Firefox are.

Chrome is restricting fingerprinting, but they still ship google analytics in the browser itself so it's harder to block. They'll only really block fingerprinting in their browser when they have no use for it.

Source for the claim of google analytics in the browser itself?

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#16

Post by _underfl0w_ »

Haven't read TFA yet, but at first glance this sounds similar to the approach used by the "Privacy Badger" browser extension - if it sees the same tracker on multiple sites, it "learns" and begins blocking it. Would it also be susceptible to similar information leaks with this threat model?

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#17

Post by BoorishBears »

mcphage wrote: post #12
arkadiyt wrote: post #3

Reposting from the other [1] thread: Basically Safari keeps track of which domains are being requested in a 3rd party context (i.e. I load example.com in my browser and the page loads the facebook sdk - Safari increments a counter for facebook by 1). Once a given domain reaches 3 hits, Safari will strip cookies and some other data in 3rd party requests to that domain. The problem is that advertisers can use this to f…

Based on that, won't the presence of facebook on the ITP list mean either you go to Facebook, or that you've been to multiple sites that have checked if you go to Facebook? ie, won't these techniques soon end up with all false positives?

If you make random domains that only your site references, and they're on someone's list, then you know it's your site

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#18

Post by dang »

arkadiyt wrote: post #3

Reposting from the other [1] thread: Basically Safari keeps track of which domains are being requested in a 3rd party context (i.e. I load example.com in my browser and the page loads the facebook sdk - Safari increments a counter for facebook by 1). Once a given domain reaches 3 hits, Safari will strip cookies and some other data in 3rd party requests to that domain. The problem is that advertisers can use this to f…

Please don't copy/paste comments on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and makes for pain when we go to merge duplicate threads. If you want to refer to something you posted elsewhere, please use a link.

Better still, when you see a split discussion, email hn@ycombinator.com so we can merge them. We'll make sure your comment ends up in the winning thread.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#19

Post by function_seven »

qmmmur wrote: post #8
lmkg wrote: post #5

There is a fundamental difficulty when trying to implement privacy: A limit on the disclosure of information is itself a disclosure of information. A good privacy design needs to confront this issue directly. Sometimes there's nothing to be done. I think in some cases it's mathematically unsolvable (cf. Cynthia Dwork's paper on Differential Privacy). But an explicit consideration can at least surface some trade-offs.…

It makes me think of password requirements. Isn't it bad to earmark a password as requiring certain things rather than to let the possibilities be completely open?

From a strictly mathematical view, yeah. Requiring that certain character classes exist in the password will shrink the search space for that password.

But: (1) only a tiny teeny little bit, and (2) the gains in password complexity are probably worth a lot more.

Imagine you have a site that allows numeric PINs between 4 and 6 digits. And another site that requires exactly 6 digits.

Technically, the search space is larger for the first site. An attacker would have 1,110,000 possible codes to check, whereas the 2nd site has 1,000,000. But ensuring that all users are in the 1,000,000 search space is worth it to prevent some users' 4-digit PINs being cracked.

Re: Information Leaks via Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention

#20

Post by erichocean »

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #16

Haven't read TFA yet, but at first glance this sounds similar to the approach used by the "Privacy Badger" browser extension - if it sees the same tracker on multiple sites, it "learns" and begins blocking it. Would it also be susceptible to similar information leaks with this threat model?

Yup
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