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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

blog.mozilla.org

251–260 of 786 posts

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use your browser settings to block third-party cookies altogether. And, better yet, install uBlock Origin and never see an ad again.

Doesn’t Google grant itself first-party status by redirecting you through an advertisement domain? µBlock definitely is the king of ad blocking extensions — only the fork AdNauseam ( https://adnauseam.io/ ) can compete, and that’s by both blocking ads and fighting back with obfuscating click simulation.

Hmm. I think it would be better if the extension clicked randomly rather than clicked on all ads. That would cause the numbers to be much harder to interpret, and ad agencies or departments would have a much harder time measuring their efficacy or justifying their existence.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#252
post #142
post #18

"In the case of Firefox’s image cache, a tracker can create a supercookie by “encoding” an identifier for the user in a cached image on one website, and then “retrieving” that identifier on a different website by embedding the same image." Clever. And so frustrating that optimisations need to be turned off due to bad actors.

In Javascript how are they able to retrieve something from the cache? Local, session, and cookies are domain locked.

I think that they put the user information in the image using something like this[1].

[1]. https://github.com/subc/steganography

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the /s. This is HN here you find people that can take that seriously and agree.

IMO the /s requirement applies anywhere. Sarcasm is dead, literal expressions are literally interpreted literally since 2018 and on.

Sarcasm only works if it can succesfully comunicate that it is sarcasm; be it body language, face expression, absurdity, or memeing. On the internet you are a random faceless stranger to me, so how can I distinguish sarcasm other than guessing?

If the priors were the other way then people would complain that nobody takes anyone seriously.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#254
post #231

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…

These are some of the only ads I see online these days (on Read the Docs, mostly). I don't use ad blockers, but I do use tracker blockers, and those block pretty much all ads, for obvious reasons. Not these ones, though. And that's how it's supposed to go.

Can you elaborate on your setup?

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can do that via whitelist/blacklist: https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/misc/whitelist-blacklist/

allowlist/denylist

Why are people being so negative about this?

If the terms whitelist/blacklist are hurtful to some people because of all the racial baggage we've applied to the words white and black, why not switch to allow/deny instead?

Using allow/deny is more explicit and doesn't rely on the benign cultural associations with the colors black and white. The choice of colors used here is arbitrary. For example, one could just as easily use green/red in reference to traffic signal colors. Ask yourself, would it bother you if we used blue and pink for allow and deny? What if we used blue or white as synonymous with deny?

Two good reasons exist to change our habits, basic manners and clarity.

I'm sure I'll use the terms blacklist and whitelist from time to time out of accumulated habit. But there's no reason for me to cling to those terms. Being gently reminded to use objectively clearer terminology shouldn't engender hostility on my part. I try not to be an unpleasant person, part of that is when someone tells me my behavior has a negative impact on them, I try to listen to what they say and modify my behavior--while actually effecting change can be hard, the underlying concept is pretty simple.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#257
post #193
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 added this to my /etc/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts What is the advantage of having DNS on a separate device other than that it provides ad blocking for multiple devices?

That’s the main benefit.

But also you can have more flexible block patterns. I run DNSCrypt-Proxy and my block lists can have wildcards. With /etc/hosts you have to enumerate each origin. It can also do things like IP blocking where if any domain resolves to a known ad network IP, then that request is blocked.

But mainly, DNSCrypt-proxy encrypts all my outgoing queries and round robins them across resolvers. (Also hi dheera!)

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#258

Use uBlock Origin, Multi Account Containers, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes and CookieAutoDelete with Firefox. Make sure you aggressively clear cache, cookies, etc., periodically (with CookieAutoDelete). You’ll probably load the web servers more and also add more traffic on your network, but it will help protect your privacy since most websites don’t care about that. When websites are user hostile, you have to take pr…

You forgot NoScript.

uBlock Origin with privacy lists negates the need for Privacy Badger.

Decentraleyes is neat but I've found multiple sites it breaks.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#259
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.

A black celebrity (forget who) said that he came to the realization growing up that the only positive connotation he could find for black was "in the black" with regards to finances. So, I kind of see the point.

The downside of that is being 'in the red', which is also potentially problematic.

To fix the problem, we either have to stop referring to any metaphor/symbol involving color with negative connotations; or we have to stop using color to identify and refer to people. I think the former is good for precision (allowlist/denylist are great identifiers in that regard), but won't really solve our other problems; while the latter is probably better for human dignity, mutual respect, and combating our propensity for tribalism/racism. (Or, why not, we could do both.)

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t Google grant itself first-party status by redirecting you through an advertisement domain? µBlock definitely is the king of ad blocking extensions — only the fork AdNauseam ( https://adnauseam.io/ ) can compete, and that’s by both blocking ads and fighting back with obfuscating click simulation.

Hmm. I think it would be better if the extension clicked randomly rather than clicked on all ads. That would cause the numbers to be much harder to interpret, and ad agencies or departments would have a much harder time measuring their efficacy or justifying their existence.

Me too, and it provides a slider for the percentage to click that I kept below 100 when I used it (now I use Palemoon, which doesn’t support WebExtensions, and I use /etc/hosts).
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