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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

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Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#81

Post by danShumway »

chromaton wrote: post #16

Is this really important given that browser fingerprinting can almost always identify a web browser?

In a parallel reality:

"Firefox 85 Cracks Down on Fingerprinting"

"Is this really important given that supercookies can almost always persist between sessions and across domains?"

----

If you want to fix a problem, there are going to be points during that process where the problem is partially fixed. This only becomes an issue if we're headed in the wrong direction, or focusing on a sub-problem that would be better addressed in a different way, or if we have no plans to fix the other attack vectors.

But the steps we'll take to attack fingerprinting are very similar to the steps we'll take to attack supercookies, so there's no harm in grabbing the low-hanging fruit first.

Supercookies clearly have some value to advertisers and other bad actors or else they wouldn't be used. There's value in closing off that specific tracking method while we continue to try and figure out the harder problem of how to standardize headers, resource loading, etc...

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#82

Post by _-david-_ »

Tarsul wrote: post #65
minikites wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good when a company does it because they create value in the economy. It's only bad when a person does it because no value is created.

don't know if you're sarcastic. However, just because a company makes money, doesn't mean value is created. Like when you win in poker against someone, you're making money but not creating value.

I am not who you were responding to, but I think playing poker would create entertainment (even for the loser) which could be considered something of value.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#83

Post by warent »

ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

I run a network ad-block dns (pihole) and consistently 25-33% of all my network traffic is blocked as ads. It's much more than I ever imagined. Now I'm used to a different internet, when I'm using internet off the network it's like WTF is this?

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#84

Post by crtasm »

paulpauper wrote: post #6

Twitter uses these type of cookies. They even use cookies that do not contain any reference to the twitter domain. It is how they track people who have been suspended on the platform

What other domain(s) are they setting cookies on? I'm not seeing any (but I am not logged in).

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#85

Post by nixpulvis »

I'm still trying to imagine the way one exploits a lack of partitioning in the DNS cache...

1. It seems like client web pages cannot directly view the DNS information for a given domain name. So I would think embedding identifying information in something like a CNAME or TXT record directly wouldn't work. 2. I suppose a tracker could try to create unique records for a given domain name and then use request/responses to/from that domain to get identifying information. But this seems highly dependent on being able to control the DNS propagation. Short of my ISP trying this trick on me, I'm not really sure who else could manage.

I'm sure I am missing things in this brief analysis. I'd love to hear what others think about this cache.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#86

Post by Jestar342 »

kristofferR wrote: post #73
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

A much more significant performance issue with web tracking is usually the absurd amount of JS loaded. It's almost impressive how they manage to load so much crap. Just visit a site like mediaite.com, the list of trackers is damn long.

For more than a decade I've been campaigning (to any of my employers that utilise adverts on their platform) to drop adverts with the primary factor being that of performance for page load. The last time I looked, adverts were adding an additional ~35% load time to the page. Anywhere from 5% to _60%_ (!!) of vistors were navigating away before page load completed (Varied depending on company/product of course) and a staggering 80+% of those vistors would have had a full page load if the adverts were not there.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#87

Post by adkadskhj »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #74
jniedrauer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see something like the firefox container extension automatically open a new container for every unique domain name. It could get tricky for eg. federated logins, so I'm not 100% sure what the implementation would look like. But it'd be nice to have the option.

The Temporary Containers addon[1] does this. Combined with the usual Multi-Account Containers "always open this site in..." mechanism you can have some sites always open in a single container, but all other sites open in temporary containers that get deleted shortly after you close their tab. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

For clarity - the workflow is basically that all sites would be temporary containers, except sites you explicitly set to be managed by Multi-Account Containers?

edit: I'm trying this out, seems to work nicely - but assigning all the sites that i want permanent state on to different account containers is a bit of a chore. Feel like i'm doing something wrong there.

But the temporary containers are working great

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#88

Post by ogre_codes »

warent wrote: post #83
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

I run a network ad-block dns (pihole) and consistently 25-33% of all my network traffic is blocked as ads. It's much more than I ever imagined. Now I'm used to a different internet, when I'm using internet off the network it's like WTF is this?

I just have a decent set of ad blockers and the experience is similar. Unfortunately, it often results in weird experiences or I get sites which don't work at all if you have ad blocking.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#89

Post by makecheck »

ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

Modern ad networks are essentially the “fax machine flyers” of old: someone you don’t know using your resources and your time, denying you use of your own resources temporarily, to send you something you don’t want. Except now it’s like every “normal” fax page includes 15,000 flyers.
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