61–70 of 98 posts
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I may not have the right to have access to most of these websites but I do have the right to complain about how unethical I find it. And of course this situation has different implications if the website offers some sort of an essential service, but that's an entirely different discussion.
OP is just suggesting you vote with your 'wallet' by not using those sites - they're not saying you should stop complaining.
quickly realized that some of the fingerprinting information could be useful for VM detection because vendor names were exposed. In this particular instance the string "VMWare" was contained within the WebGL information. After some more testing I also discovered that VirtualBox reported the same kind of information. I believe there are patches that can close those holes, but I've always found the fact that such infor…
> Ideally, a VM should be indistinguishable from real hardware Why? I mean, it's possible to make a VM that's indistinguishable (except for speed), but what's the purpose of doing so? Most people who run VMs have the purpose of "I want this application to run more conveniently than having dedicated hardware for it." For that purpose, it's useful to provide abstractions (e.g., providing dedicated access to CPUs in a w…
The obvious case people will think about is the security angle (by using a vm you to impersonate a consumer end user, so for eaxmple malware doesn't realize it's running in a vm). But there are other cases where murphy's law will bite you.
For example I bet some WebGL apps manage to trip themselves up over this feature string because of whitelists or buggy logic in code that tries to be clever about used features vs underlying platform.
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The web APIs seem to be filled with features that in theory could be useful but you would have to do some serious hunting to find a legitimate user while you are flooded with examples of evil uses. Firefox removed the battery API for this. In theory you could do something like show a stripped down site for low power users or something but it was only ever used for tracking. While browsers have been used for a lot now…
The problem with limiting browser features is that it makes web apps less competitive with apps on propertiary platforms. I agree not all websites should have access to battery API, but the user should decide on that, not a browser vendor. The same goes for all other limitations imposed.
I am honestly more surprised by the fact that we let these kinds of APIs creep into our browsers. What’s the scenario where a website needs to know how much RAM or what kind of video adapter I have? I get it for a game or a desktop app, but a website? At the end of the day, we all know that any kinds of unique identifiers will be used in combination. We need to reduce those to an absolute minimum. Today’s browser API…
Browsers "had to" replace Java Applets and Flash. With the great side effect that users can no longer easily just disable those plugins to get rid of the malware build on top.
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Sorry to say, but if you act like someone you aren't, you are not going to be welcome at websites that want to know they are responding to a real person. Basically you are acting like you have something to hide which typically is something that people up to no good would do. I'm not saying you are up to no good, but your activity mirrors as such.
It's just unfortunate that companies are employing precog future-crime concepts to what (should) be standard privacy approaches. And, to be clear, I'm not acting like someone I'm not. I'm forthcoming that I have an identity, and I'm even willing to prove that I'm a self-consistent individual. I'm acting like someone that has purchased a month-to-month phone, and have signed up for a free email account, and values the…
I would venture out even and say that categorically, there are unjust laws that people should be able to hide from - I would want to help them do that. By creating a culture that respects privacy, we insulate ourselves against a lot of the damage that can be done by a poorly managed legal system / toxic culture / opportunistic economic structure. I was just recently reading about how the military buys adtech data to track foreign nationals. I feel like we're living out a Gibson novel.
I do try to "fuzz" my presence as much as possible, because of this. However, like you mention, it ain't easy.
Otherwise browser developers would create generic classes of device that segment users into large groups based on features.
The fonts thing is proof. For years, you install a custom font on your pc. Then you are unique.