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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

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Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#241

Post by zinekeller »

chromaton wrote: post #186
zinekeller wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it has some native anti-fingerprinting protection (including automatically deleting third-party cookies every week), the main deterrent is homogeneity: you can be sure that the browser/device is Safari on iPhone 12 Pro Max... and that's it. In other words, unlike other devices where you can get what GPU is in the system (WebGL and Canvas), the resolution of the screen, the list of fonts installed by the user (i…

I found this: https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/04/ad-industry-tracking/ "my iPhone 11 Pro was also unique among the more than 2.5 million devices they have tested." Time zone is one possible fingerprint data point.

> Time zone is one possible fingerprint data point.

Totally forget that. Oops.

Now for the meat of your comment ...and how many have tested their protections so that their testing site recognize that your device is not unique?

A very good counterclaim was posted in the comments:

I strongly disagree with your findings, Ben. Namely, you list fingerprinting techniques available to browsers, and fail to mention how Safari (and Firefox to some extent) make those methods less precise. Instead, you say

Note that this isn’t a comprehensive list, it’s just examples. When a website analyses all of the data available to it, things get very specific, very fast.

So let me point out where you were wrong about Safari in particular:

• Fonts installed. Safari reports very limited subset of fonts, which does not vary. it is the same for every Safari users.

• Plugins installed. Unsurprisingly, Safari lists just one: PDF reader. Native plugins are not reported.

• Codecs supported for video. The uniqueness checking site reported just H.264 and FLAC. Audio format are not reported at all. There's no mention of H.265 and VP9 which work in my Safari beta version, and no mention of the whole plethora of audio formats which are supported.

• Screen resolution is not the real screen resolution. I'm on 27'' 5K iMac and the screen is reported as 2048 x 1152.

• Media devices attached reported as "audioinput" and "videoinput". It has nothing to do with the actual available media devices.

And incorrect reporting goes on.

As you can see, fingerprinting through browser leaves Safari users very poorly segregated. As long as you running latest OS with latest version of Safari, you are a part of a very broad chunk. You can't be identified through browser fingerprinting along.

This means that the only unique data that you can get are: a) Language settings. There is no way to work-around this (unless you consistently lie that you solely use English) b) Time zone. There is no way to work-around this (unless you consistently lie that you solely use UTC)

These things can be predicted anyway with IP address, so it is not perceptibly meaningful in any way. In other words, advertisers can literally give up on detecting when Safari are the browser and rely instead on IP addresses (which can tie into a family (or in some IPv6 cases) a device.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#242

Post by shaan7 »

foepys wrote: post #164
jypepin wrote: post #28

Tracking has become so bad that it seems like users have to spend money (more bandwidth) to protect themselves from it. Crazy and sad to see where we've come :\

Nobody would accept interconnected face scanners in every building they walk into but online it's somehow okay.

You know what is surprising? A lot of people will easily accept those face scanners too :/

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#243

Post by ericholscher »

Nextgrid wrote: post #235
ericholscher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're trying to build an ad network that doesn't track users: https://www.ethicalads.io/ We talked a little bit about how these ads still work, even without tracking you. You might be losing 10-15% of revenue, but if you never had that revenue to start with, you don't miss it: https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2018/04/ethical-advertising-w... I think the real secret is just to not become dependent on the additive revenu…

This is great. How are the ads paid for though - is it billed per click or per impression, or is it billed per an approximate amount of time the ad will be displayed for? The problem with charging per click or impression is that you're vulnerable to fraud which means you either lose money/trust or you have to do invasive tracking to detect & prevent fraud (which you'll be unlikely to achieve as well as the big player…

We are doing CPC & CPM pricing. I don't believe anyone has asked us for "time seen" pricing. I don't even really know how that would work, and why it wouldn't be open to fraud in a similar fashion.

Do you have a good example of how this is priced, and how it would work in practice?

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#244

Post by notyourwork »

foepys wrote: post #164
jypepin wrote: post #28

Tracking has become so bad that it seems like users have to spend money (more bandwidth) to protect themselves from it. Crazy and sad to see where we've come :\

Nobody would accept interconnected face scanners in every building they walk into but online it's somehow okay.

Amazon Go disagrees with you. We're moving that direction and I think the pace will accelerate.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#245

Post by ericholscher »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #240
ericholscher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're trying to build an ad network that doesn't track users: https://www.ethicalads.io/ We talked a little bit about how these ads still work, even without tracking you. You might be losing 10-15% of revenue, but if you never had that revenue to start with, you don't miss it: https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2018/04/ethical-advertising-w... I think the real secret is just to not become dependent on the additive revenu…

There is no such thing as an ethical ad. Advertising is a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed. Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore. Worse yet, we don't need advertising to bolster our media. Unfortunately, the media execs don't realize this yet. All your me…

If you'd like to suggest another way to make OSS sustainable, I'd be all ears.

A bit more color here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#246

Post by wtetzner »

pants-no-pants wrote: post #238
mstade wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people reading this comment are thinking, "what's a fax machine?" :o) I like the analogy, but I wonder how effective it is on anyone under the age of what, 35?

My bank still accepts fax documents. All I would have to do is find a fax machine ...

There are online services that let you upload a PDF, and they'll fax it for you.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#247

Post by castwide »

zxexz wrote: post #236
mstade wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people reading this comment are thinking, "what's a fax machine?" :o) I like the analogy, but I wonder how effective it is on anyone under the age of what, 35?

You might be surprised how many of us under-35s still have to use Fax machines on a regular basis ;)

Especially anyone who works in law, government, banking, or healthcare.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#248

Post by cgriswald »

pkulak wrote: post #173
tsujp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and everyone else who exhibit this are reading into things that don't exist. Language has context, words are part of language and so therefore words have context too.

Exactly. And using white/black as synonyms for good/bad may be creating context (connotations, really) that we don't want. It would be fine if we hadn't already overloaded those words to refer to people... but, here we are. In the context we've created. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The original poster used the terms used by the technology. The best choices for changing this terminology would be to write a treatise for HN consumption (to reach the community at large) or to contact the authors of the technology that use this terminology (to fix the origin in this case). Sniping a 'random internet poster' is just lazy trolling.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#249

Post by vaduz »

tux1968 wrote: post #191
pradn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't always alternatives - think shopping for certain items, government forms.

Why would a site that hopes you'll send them money in exchange for product, refuse your traffic if you have an ad blocker enabled? That just costs them money. Same for government forms, why would they refuse your traffic if you're blocking ads?

It might not be intentional to break the site experience for adblock users - but there is a number of sites that has implemented link tracking in a way that overrides the normal click (though sometimes not keypress) events, to let the tracking code do its thing. If the tracking code is blocked or fails to load, that means a lot of actions break.

Best part? Trying to convince the operators of such sites that users they cannot see in their "analytics solution" are worth fixing their site for is not exactly a straightfoward job - from their narrow view, these users simply do not exist, because the tracking does not show them!

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#250

Post by myWindoonn »

ericholscher wrote: post #245
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as an ethical ad. Advertising is a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed. Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore. Worse yet, we don't need advertising to bolster our media. Unfortunately, the media execs don't realize this yet. All your me…

If you'd like to suggest another way to make OSS sustainable, I'd be all ears. A bit more color here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...

Rather than open source, let us return to Free Software. The point of our labor is not to ensure that we are paid; it is to tear down the systems which create inequality and scarcity in the first place.
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