The main privacy breach is Referrer HTML header in request for fonts, which feeds browsing history to Google.
Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
61–70 of 146 posts
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screw designers. They have ruined so many things over the years. It's time to take back control.
As both a developer and designer, this comment seems absurd to me. Art and information both play vital roles in the human experience.
I get the feeling there are a lot of points of view in the above sub-thread that are using mutually exclusive definitions of "design".
Art being one that doesn't factor in greatly, but also has its own subjective definition.
There's design that's for helping the user access and process the information. I like this design, I'm all for it; pro-user.
There's design that's for aesthetic; motif; differentiation for the sake of differentiation. This probably overlaps with "art" and can, and often does, actively work against usage of the site for the sake of 'cool'. Works for people that rate aesthetic over content.
Then there's design for engagement and / or advertising revenue (and I'll include "data slurping" as advertising revenue). In relation to the topic, its likely one of the other design choices is leading to secondary data slurping that the website designer may not be aware of.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#63This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.
we must be after different things.
the web is for the content.
I decide how my view of it appears.
this has always been the case html provides __suggestions__ css and what not let me interpret those suggestions as I will.
If you want to curate your design experience put it in a pdf for your fanbase and leave my day to day browsing out of it.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#64One thing I don’t see mentioned here is the possibility of additional profiling by disabling web fonts. Doesn’t this make you more more unique as a user since very few people disable web fonts? I suppose you could argue that many users can be uniquely identified either way but it’s no doubt a strong additional piece of info.
The absence of info can’t be “additional” info. It’s a differentiating factor, but at best it’s on par with any other single info you would have sent through the font fetching request. Arguably that single boolean characteristic (“fonts disabled”) is way less info than the dozens of characteristics you expose when fetching a font.
Disallowing font loading would be trivially used in fingerprinting. The non-boolean cascade of font fallbacks is too, but knowing that a user has a browsing context which should trigger one or more of those fallbacks, but doesn’t, is far more information than knowing that their browser behaves as expected.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#65This is a very shortsighted view from developer who forget a web page is not only a bunch of text. Designer also play an important role to provide the subtle design element that developers don't value. By blocking all web fonts and fallback to only system font, you may still be able to read the text, but will completely missed the design.
Screw designers. They have ruined so many things over the years. It's time to take back control.
Designers are often asked to polish turds or comb over broken business models. I wouldn’t look in their direction if you need someone to blame.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#66In a similar vein, LocalCDN is an extension to serve the most common javascript libraries from your browser instead of going to 3rd party servers, while there are edge cases when you use a local copy, I've rarely had an issue. https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN/ Removes integrity and crossorigin tags from embedded script and style elements to replace even more frameworks Font Awesome Google Material Icons jQuery Bo…
Another option for this is https://decentraleyes.org/
Decentraleyes resources are hugely out of date to the point where it does nothing.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#67In a similar vein, LocalCDN is an extension to serve the most common javascript libraries from your browser instead of going to 3rd party servers, while there are edge cases when you use a local copy, I've rarely had an issue. https://codeberg.org/nobody/LocalCDN/ Removes integrity and crossorigin tags from embedded script and style elements to replace even more frameworks Font Awesome Google Material Icons jQuery Bo…
LocalCDN provides no meaningful privacy gains over enabling Total Cookie Protection (i.e. dynamic FPI, already enabled by default in modern versions of Firefox) and disabling cross-site referers, which you should do anyways.
This, it's also why it's in the category of "don't bother" https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-don... not only that it will make your browser easier to fingerprint as one of the Tor developers pointed out.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
By domain or filename. Another reason to not use icon fonts. https://github.blog/2016-02-22-delivering-octicons-with-svg/
Agreed. It's been like 7 years since icon fonts were recommended and it's a real shame I still regularly see people do it today.
I mean the outdated tutorials still suggest icon fonts. What’s a good alternative?
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screw designers. They have ruined so many things over the years. It's time to take back control.
As both a developer and designer, this comment seems absurd to me. Art and information both play vital roles in the human experience.
A computer and any code that execute within one are tools, and tools must first and foremost serve to enable its user.
This means when it comes to software design, function always trumps form. A tool should never be designed with form over function in mind, it must always be function over form. Any form (design) that impedes the function must be culled with extreme prejudice.
When it comes to remote fonts, they slow down page download and consequently load time, they violate privacy rules and laws, they impede accessibility when fallbacks fail or do not exist (eg: Webdings, aka "icon" fonts), and objectively they only serve as a form of luxury for the website with no regard for end-users.
Most of us also know from experience that software designers by and large prioritize form over function, oftentimes with complete disregard for the function thereof.
So I second grandparent post's opinion: Screw designers. Removing them from the development process will bring about more net benefits than any benefits they might be bringing to the table.
Re: Blocking web fonts for speed and privacy (2016)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
LocalCDN provides no meaningful privacy gains over enabling Total Cookie Protection (i.e. dynamic FPI, already enabled by default in modern versions of Firefox) and disabling cross-site referers, which you should do anyways.
This, it's also why it's in the category of "don't bother" https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-don... not only that it will make your browser easier to fingerprint as one of the Tor developers pointed out.
+1, that guide is a beacon of light in the sea of misinformation about what extensions to use. I agree with almost everything on it.