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Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

forbes.com

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Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is, depending on your perspective, either terrifying or just stupid. Right now anti-fingerprinting security is not very high on anyone's minds, but remember that your digital fingerprints follow you EVERYWHERE. You can't turn them off or disable them on your side like cookies. It's sort of like the wholesale elimination of privacy as a concept, you might say. But hence the stupidity! It's too bold a move not to…

It's unfortunate that the pbtest.org tool links out to a service with an expired cert.

[deleted]

Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is, depending on your perspective, either terrifying or just stupid. Right now anti-fingerprinting security is not very high on anyone's minds, but remember that your digital fingerprints follow you EVERYWHERE. You can't turn them off or disable them on your side like cookies. It's sort of like the wholesale elimination of privacy as a concept, you might say. But hence the stupidity! It's too bold a move not to…

It's unfortunate that the pbtest.org tool links out to a service with an expired cert.

certs are not necessary, they are a tradeoff

Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#15
Every browser information leak that can contribute to fingerprinting needs to be plainly considered a security vulnerability in need of fixing/mitigation, period. This class of vulnerabilities has continued to get a huge pass, only being taken seriously by projects like TOR browser and then still only the convenient fixes getting backported.

I do realize this is a tall ask, as many of these vulnerabilities arise from standards promulgated by the surveillance industry itself (chiefly Google, of course), and so are not easily mitigated. For example font lists and ask-to-use-microphone are straightforward to fix for general web browsing, whereas the fix for browser viewport size requires some kind of thoughtful design that subsumes the old model.

In general I'd say that browsers (or at least their operating modes) need to start differentiating into different things for the open [season] web versus app runtimes, so that vulnerability mitigations can be stronger for the open [season] web and sidestep complaints that it disrupts legitimate apps. Of course the two modes need to be indistinguishable by websites, lest every two-bit xitter-summarizing "news" site insists that it's some special snowflake needing app functionality to run its surveillance code.

Also since I'm apparently writing my Christmas list, we desperately need widespread privacy laws in the US. If you want a "value add" feature of your product to be shoving ads in people's faces, fine - people at least get immediate and actionable feedback from that. But persistent tracking supported by pervasive surveillance is completely at odds with individual liberty. And taking away the largest consumer surveillance market would mean much less being invested in new ways to attack users.

Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that the pbtest.org tool links out to a service with an expired cert.

Alternative: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 183,020 tested in the past 45 days.

Damn how is this possible when I'm using a stock iPhone? I look at the characteristics and apart from timezone and language, how can they tell the same model iPhone apart?

Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that the pbtest.org tool links out to a service with an expired cert.

Alternative: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

TIL about Web Audio, an API that allows any web page to find out about the user's sound setup (e.g. channel count and some kind of transfer function of the audio subsystem?) despite there being no legitimate purpose for that.

Re: Google starts tracking all your devices in 8 weeks

#18
I have a script which runs a random browser in incognito mode with a random user agent and a random search website every time I click a shortcut. Then another script changes the DOH dns setting for my connection every hour. Next up I will set a socks proxy setting on each browser via command line params to a ssh connection located in Europe. Oh and I also change my computer name on every logon and have random hw address enabled.
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