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Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

fonts.bunny.net

171–180 of 346 posts

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#171
If it were me, I'd make third-party font sources require a SHA hash. In pseudocode:

    url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/comic-sans", sha="abcd1234")
This way:

- If my browser has comic-sans cached, no request is made

- Caching works even if the same resource is sourced from multiple places (e.g. I can host comic-sans locally, but if they got it from a CDN, they don't need to get it again)

- If a malicious site replaces a resource, that's flagged

I think the trick would be to make this optional (but bandwidth/privacy-saving), and gradually to make this increasingly mandatory for different types of resources. AJAX calls obviously can't have SHA hashes, but JavaScript libraries can.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#172
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are based on Switzerland Crypto AG was based out of switzerland.

It was owned by American Government.

Secretly, for decades.

You don't know who secretly owns any companies in Switzerland today. Your favorite Swiss VPN could be owned by Equifax or Acxiom for all you know.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can reasonably assume that bunny.net doesn't also correlate, cross-link, and permanently store which sites our IPs visit, for the purposes of enhanced ad delivery. Which Google does: that's literally what every single service they offer does in addition to "the thing you need that service for". Even sites that don't offer Google ads or Google analytics _still provide Google with behavioural data linked to you_ by…

I don't think we can reasonably assume either of those things. You're speculating about both Google Fonts and Bunny fonts based on very little information.

No, and yes, respectively. If you consider "Google recording and monteizing on CORS URL requests" speculation, I'm not sure you know much about the company we're talking about here. They've been sued and fined over tracking quite a number of times.

Do we know whether bunny.net is any better? In the abstract, no we don't, but we're not dealing in abstracts, so we actually do because of where they operate. A real European operation (not an international company with EU presence but an HQ outside of direct EU jurisdiction) is by default quite a bit better at not violating GDPR, and runs the actual risk of being fined into financial insolvency (rather than getting a few hundred million slap on wrist that a multibillion dollar company goes "pff, whatever, let legal sort it out" to).

By virtue of Google's track record, and by virtue of where this new service is located, and the track record of EU based services with regards to privacy compared to their US counterparts:

Yes, we can _very_ reasonably assume both of those things.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#174

If it were me, I'd make third-party font sources require a SHA hash. In pseudocode: url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/comic-sans", sha="abcd1234") This way: - If my browser has comic-sans cached, no request is made - Caching works even if the same resource is sourced from multiple places (e.g. I can host comic-sans locally, but if they got it from a CDN, they don't need to get it again) - If a malicious site replaces…

Couldn't you use a Content-Security-Policy for this?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Co...

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#175
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Fonts logs records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is kept secure. and https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_f... leads me to believe that Google has PI when people visit sites using google fonts. Even if they don't use it for advertising purposes long term log keeping is not required to serve fonts. It doesn't really matter what the service is doing, they…

"by including Google-Fonts-hosted font on its pages, passed the unidentified plaintiff's IP address to Google without authorization and without a legitimate reason for doing so" It isn't about whether the IP address was logged, but about whether it was sent. Which is an unavoidable aspect of loading a resource from a server.

My concern is totally about whether or not the IP is logged though and google's vague language doesn't clear doubts about that. On the contrary:

> Google Fonts logs records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is kept secure.

Why does it point this data is kept secure if there is no PI in the first place ?

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you embed a font hosted somewhere else you expose some of your user data to them. Now with fonts there's a really simple solution: Just don't. As an added bonus, hosting fonts on your own server is faster as it goes through the same HTTP connection. I never quite understood the debate around fonts. You could use the CSS/Link import that Google provides, but that's never the optimal solution. Like you I always do…

If the font is already in your browser cache (which it might be if they're hosting it on a common CDN) web pages should load with the correct font right away instead of either loading blank areas or a default fallback font before switching to the correct font, causing jank. The best solution here is to use standard fonts that are available in all browsers, of course.

Sorry, not since cache partitioning. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/http-cache-partitioning/

Privacy killed the shared cache.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#177
post #31

I find it really strange where some privacy debates have gone wrong, and this is a perfect example. It's basically a form of "don't trust them, better trust us, also we're in a country with better privacy laws". Which is an imperfect solution at best, and given that I have no idea who bunny.net is it's a questionable one at best. If you embed a font hosted somewhere else you expose some of your user data to them. Now…

> we're in a country with better privacy laws Speaking as a European: I think this is a very important topic for us. I don't think Americans and American companies understand how little trust rest of us have for the American government. Working with a company that is not subject to the whims of the American government is a huge privacy win. If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are base…

[deleted]

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#178
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet bulk data collection (in effect "mass surveillance") happens, and poses a risk in and of itself to data subjects.

You can't use the internet without risk. All you can do is measure relative risks and decide which are acceptable. Means, motive, and opportunity matter. Someone who is missing the motive portion is less of a concern than someone who has all three.

No one expects zero risk, it's about reducing risk. I choose to avoid American companies in favour of non-American competitors because the American government is hostile to privacy and is a warmonger.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#179
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to that now every other website has an annoying and useless cookie dialog I have to dismiss, as if that's forward progress in privacy protection.

That is the website owners implementing the rules in the worst way possible, either through incompetence or through deliberately trying to annoy (or fool) you into accepting everything. Be angry at the sites, not the legislation.

Can I be angry at both? Legislation is only required to regulate bad behavior by some set of entities. As such, legislation should be written assuming that those entities will exploit any loopholes. Malicious compliance is exactly what the EU should have expected and planned for.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#180
post #31

I find it really strange where some privacy debates have gone wrong, and this is a perfect example. It's basically a form of "don't trust them, better trust us, also we're in a country with better privacy laws". Which is an imperfect solution at best, and given that I have no idea who bunny.net is it's a questionable one at best. If you embed a font hosted somewhere else you expose some of your user data to them. Now…

The only reason is to escape regulatory fines for something 99% of the world doesn't give a shit about.

Not using fonts is not always an option

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