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GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

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Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#91

Post by Dylan16807 »

MrNeon wrote: post #53
pudgywalsh wrote: post #43

[flagged]

What Google was "caught" doing was exactly what it was doing in non-incognito mode already. Anyone expecting the websites you visit to know you're in private mode and to not log data is just lacking basic tech knowledge. It is silly that Google had to explicitly state that in the disclaimer.

It's reasonably detectible. And it wasn't about "websites" logging you in general, it was about Google in particular logging you, the same company that was making the misleading privacy promises. They deserved the slap over it. And it required a bit more than basic tech knowledge to understand what was misleading, it was a real problem.

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#92

Post by MallocVoidstar »

Article tells you to paste

> $lid=(Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:SOFTWAREMicrosoftIdentityCRLExtendedProperties').LID

which obviously does not work because it has all the slashes removed. Article author apparently didn't bother to proofread anything.

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#94

Post by d3Xt3r »

Cold_Miserable wrote: post #93

Get-ItemProperty : Cannot find path 'HKCU:\SOFTWAREMicrosoftIdentityCRLExtendedProperties' because it does not exist. At line:1 char:7 I guess I'm good then.

You're missing all the backslashes, so of course it doesn't exist.

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#95

Post by Peanuts99 »

Bender wrote: post #64
ranger_danger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/etc/machine-id also exists

/etc/machine-id also exists Indeed. One can regenerate it on each shutdown / reboot. The process is a little different depending on whether one has systemd or not. It's a dbus thing but systemd ingests it and there is a specific process around updating that in systemd. There is also the NetworkID in Firefox about:networking#networkid Another trackable piece of information on most systems is the creation time of / whi…

You can do the same with the GDID, it's stored in the registry.

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#96

Post by MrNeon »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #91
MrNeon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Google was "caught" doing was exactly what it was doing in non-incognito mode already. Anyone expecting the websites you visit to know you're in private mode and to not log data is just lacking basic tech knowledge. It is silly that Google had to explicitly state that in the disclaimer.

It's reasonably detectible. And it wasn't about "websites" logging you in general, it was about Google in particular logging you, the same company that was making the misleading privacy promises. They deserved the slap over it. And it required a bit more than basic tech knowledge to understand what was misleading, it was a real problem.

"Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads and bookmarks will be saved."

Can you tell me how the original Incognito mode disclaimer was misleading?

Even if it is detectable it shouldn't be detected, why would I want websites to act differently when I'm in private mode?

And if it did block Google's services from capturing the same data as they capture in non-private mode it would act as a sort of ad blocker, why should that be a function of private mode?

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#97

Post by Dylan16807 »

MrNeon wrote: post #96
Dylan16807 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonably detectible. And it wasn't about "websites" logging you in general, it was about Google in particular logging you, the same company that was making the misleading privacy promises. They deserved the slap over it. And it required a bit more than basic tech knowledge to understand what was misleading, it was a real problem.

"Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads and bookmarks will be saved." Can you tell me how the original Incognito mode disclaimer was misleading? Even if it is detectable it shouldn't be detected, why would I want websites to act differently when I'm in private mode? And if it did block Google's services from capturing the same data as they captur…

"privately" was off which is why it says "more privately" now. The combination of "privately" and "chrome won't save your history" isn't a good enough way to explain that the rest of Google is actively countering your attempt at privacy.

> why should that be a function of private mode?

Because it's the same company that was promising the privacy.

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#98

Post by MrNeon »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #97
MrNeon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity. However, downloads and bookmarks will be saved." Can you tell me how the original Incognito mode disclaimer was misleading? Even if it is detectable it shouldn't be detected, why would I want websites to act differently when I'm in private mode? And if it did block Google's services from capturing the same data as they captur…

"privately" was off which is why it says "more privately" now. The combination of "privately" and "chrome won't save your history" isn't a good enough way to explain that the rest of Google is actively countering your attempt at privacy. > why should that be a function of private mode? Because it's the same company that was promising the privacy.

>"privately" was off which is why it says "more privately" now

The actually significant change is the addition of "This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google."

Which was obvious to anyone with basic tech knowledge already.

>Because it's the same company that was promising the privacy.

But WHICH privacy? It never promised that websites won't know who you are, you can still login into websites, you're still in the same IP. Should it automatically disable all cookies and route you through seven proxies so you can be truly "private"?

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#99

Post by Dylan16807 »

MrNeon wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"privately" was off which is why it says "more privately" now. The combination of "privately" and "chrome won't save your history" isn't a good enough way to explain that the rest of Google is actively countering your attempt at privacy. > why should that be a function of private mode? Because it's the same company that was promising the privacy.

>"privately" was off which is why it says "more privately" now The actually significant change is the addition of "This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google." Which was obvious to anyone with basic tech knowledge already. >Because it's the same company that was promising the privacy. But WHICH privacy? It never promised that websites won't know who you a…

> WHICH privacy

The part about not collecting data. The kind of stuff chrome.exe is still doing.

I don't even agree it was obvious to anyone with basic tech knowledge that google.com would still super aggressively track you. Third parties yes, but not google itself. That was a policy decision they made. (Any 'how could they know' is post-hoc justification far more than real technical problem.)

Re: GDID Windows – Cut the tracker that follows you even under VPN

#100

Post by codedokode »

jolmg wrote: post #76
codedokode wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you write SELinux policies to allow reading only certain files in /proc, where process IDs are not known ahead? I ended up writing my own FUSE-based /proc emulation. The facilities are there, but it feels like writing your own OS.

What kind of use-case do you have for that? I suppose whatever it is, you could also e.g. write a privileged service that checks those files with whatever security policy you need. Your client wouldn't have direct access to /proc. Another option may be to set up a container or PID namespace and give your tool direct access to that /proc. Regarding SELinux, looking at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/767564/se…

The /proc contains too many unnecessary information, which can be used for fingerprinting or helping an attack. Run `ls /proc` and find yourself surprised. For example, why do applications need to know the kernel command line? What for? Why do they need the list of major and minor device numbers? List of filesystems? Network configuration?

So I want to follow the principle of minimal privileges and only grant access to files needed for running a program. Sadly many programs cannot run without /proc. For example, poorly coded Apple's Grand Central Dispatch library crashes the application (for example, Telegram) if it cannot enumerate the information about threads or processes. It needs this information to calculate how many additional worker threads need to be created, and if it cannot calculate the number, it terminates the application for reasons I do not understand.

There is also a catch that the program can create a new unprivileged user namespace and mount /proc there thus bypassing my daemon completely. Anyone can create a user namespace nowadays.

> Another option may be to set up a container or PID namespace and give your tool direct access to that /proc.

/proc contains information not only about processes, but a lot of extra information.

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