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Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

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Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#371
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latest Firefox still doesn't protect against browser fingerprinting. This from the EFF Panopticlick: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 303,579 tested in the past 45 days. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.21 bits of identifying information.

Two things: 1. Blocking redirect tracking is about more than just fingerprinting users. I'm a huge fan of Panopticlick's work here, but it's not a be-all end-all measure of whether a browser is getting more or less private. There are a lot of different, complicated things we're talking about when we bring up browser privacy. 2. Disable Javascript with something like uMatrix by default, and that number will drop drama…

Regarding "redirect tracking" why not just disable (HTTP) redirects? Is that possible in Firefox?

Out of curiousity, what is the "threat model" when using Panopticlick? Is it suited for users that just want to avoid tracking for commercial purposes? If the user does not enable Javascript, what good is that user to such trackers? How much commercial tracking is conducted without any use of Javascript (and without cookies)?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these addons may help against help prevent some fingerprinting attempts, they do not adequately reduce the fingerprint to be non-unique. They certainly won’t hurt, though (many websites just take a hash of the canvas). It’s very difficult to have a non-unique fingerprint. Your browser would have to be the exactly the same as a bunch of other people. At the moment (AFAIK), this is only possible with Tor (all Tor…

This is a handy site to get a feel for how unique you are: https://amiunique.org/fp Some other useful ones for seeing what you're leaking: https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.deviceinfo.me http://fp.virpo.sk/

This website isn’t very useful because every browser is unique, save Tor.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#373
I love Firefox as an alternative to Chrome but I hate how it goes of its way to be as cumbersome as possible.

Witness this example of the most terrible UI ever; how frustratingly convoluted it is to delete specific cookies:

1: Open Preferences

2: Search "cookies"

3: See a bunch of cluttered stuff

4: Scroll all the way down to "Cookies and Site Data"

5: Click "Clear Data"

6: Oops, that's not it. Cancel and try "Manage Data"

7: Search "google" for example (to avoid their crappy tactic of signing you into Search when you sign into YouTube or Gmail, but that's another story)

8: Click "Remove All Shown"

9: Click "Save Changes"

10: Get hit with a modal alert in your face showing you the list of changes to confirm.

11: Click "Remove"

https://i.imgur.com/QrE4EH3.gif

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a handy site to get a feel for how unique you are: https://amiunique.org/fp Some other useful ones for seeing what you're leaking: https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.deviceinfo.me http://fp.virpo.sk/

I wish this was helpful, but amiunique.org calls out the values for canvas, fonts, etc. as unique when running the blockers. Maybe this is because it's randomizing every time, but it makes the amiunique test pretty flawed...

amiunique.org is just a database of fingerprints (size of which is governed by however much traffic they get).

If you're showing up as unique it's either because:

1. your blockers are randomising each time

2. your blockers aren't blocking everything and what's left is still enough to uniquely fingerprint you against the database of fingerprints they have.

If it's 1 above, that's fine. If it's 2, you may need more (or better) blockers.

Also, it obviously helps from the get go if you're on a bog standard platform like Windows and using FF.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any case, it seems like you are just looking for a way to rationalize your current behavior. Not in the least. I find ads annoying and I don‘t have any skin in the game when it comes to advertising. But it‘s not a matter of simply trying Brave. I want to understand how it works for users and also for publishers. And I want to understand how it is not a proprietary system with a gatekeeper role as a structural fe…

Their advertisement network is only one and the browser gives them some leverage, but there is nothing stopping someone else to create a similar alternative. Brave already has been forked (Dissenter Browser) that remove the BAT side of things. Outside of the potential mooning of the token which would make them rich, I don't really see anything they have that gives them such a dangerous moat. Hell, a competitor could…

>Their advertisement network is only one and that uses the browser, but there is nothing stopping any one else to create a similar alternative.

Does Brave support a way for other ad networks to integrate into their BAT system? If not, any competitor would first have to popularise their own web browser.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#376

I love Firefox as an alternative to Chrome but I hate how it goes of its way to be as cumbersome as possible. Witness this example of the most terrible UI ever; how frustratingly convoluted it is to delete specific cookies: 1: Open Preferences 2: Search "cookies" 3: See a bunch of cluttered stuff 4: Scroll all the way down to "Cookies and Site Data" 5: Click "Clear Data" 6: Oops, that's not it. Cancel and try "Manage…

It isn't great but imho it's better than Chrome which confuses me each time and feels super limited:

1. Open settings

2. Privacy and security

3. Scroll down to find the tiny "See all cookies and site data"

4. Use the search box for the site you want

5. Then you only have the option of removing everything from that site?? There's a little X icon to the right of each cookie but clicking it does nothing

Unless there's a better way I haven't seen (I use chrome infrequently)

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a handy site to get a feel for how unique you are: https://amiunique.org/fp Some other useful ones for seeing what you're leaking: https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.deviceinfo.me http://fp.virpo.sk/

This website isn’t very useful because every browser is unique, save Tor.

I use it as a benchmark for how well my blockers etc. are working. Yes you are unique initially but you can then tweak everything until you start becoming less unique.

For things that should always be unique (like a canvas fingerprint), just make sure to randomise it each time.

Basically, you want to appear as mundane as possible (user agent, screen resolution, fonts, platform etc.) and be able to change on demand as much of the remaining entropy (as is feasible) that would normally be expected to be unique.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default option should be "show options", letting you choose with one click between Blank, Mozilla Ads, Your Recent/Favorite Pages, and a custom URL or set of URLs. There are 6 levels to your process above. Imagine being tech-illiterate and asked to navigate that - or, maybe easier, imagine trying to dictate that process to someone you know who is tech-illiterate over the phone. Even if you know exactly what to do…

>There are 6 levels to your process above Hit options -> Click dropdown of "new tab" field and select "Blank page". 2 steps. If the parent post is being disingenuous with their point, yours is as equally disingenuous by being an incredibly over-complicated deconstruction of hitting options and reading 2 fields down. If they have to be walked through finding the options menu (half your paragraph is about opening the o…

My mistake, I was on a Mac and I intuitively look for app settings in the main menu bar, which is what I was describing. I should have looked up the process on other platforms to determine if it was just as intuitive

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#379
post #348
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hi! We at Mozilla certainly don't see that! I'm at 815 tabs ..." Sorry ... hijack ... Could you please implement a special: settings://tabs ... URL that just gives a plaintext list of tab URLs currently open ? As it stands, the only way to get this list is to poke around in /Library/ files and then use JSON command line tools to export ... etc., etc. I just want a built-in page that gives me all the URLs of current…

That's a great idea but it's wildly outside my wheelhouse! Our bug tracker is here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org FWIW this sounds super easy to do within an extension: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

"FWIW this sounds super easy to do within an extension ..."

It probably is but I feel like debug/info URLs are simple and lightweight and belong in the core feature set - especially this one which you can find hundreds of examples over decades of people asking how to get this information.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#380
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hi! We at Mozilla certainly don't see that! I'm at 815 tabs ..." Sorry ... hijack ... Could you please implement a special: settings://tabs ... URL that just gives a plaintext list of tab URLs currently open ? As it stands, the only way to get this list is to poke around in /Library/ files and then use JSON command line tools to export ... etc., etc. I just want a built-in page that gives me all the URLs of current…

Workaround: 1. Shift+Ctrl+D to bookmark all open tabs (in the current browser window) in a new bookmark folder. 2. Right-click on the new bookmark folder and select "Copy". 3. Then paste into your favorite text editor.

Thank you, but that's not a good workaround because your open tabs might be spread across 10 or 12 or 20 different windows ...

This isn't so much a feature request as it is a request for some simple debug info which can be accessed with a special://url (whatever those are called ...)

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