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Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

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Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#2
If you don't pay attention to it you might be surprised how non dynamic your residential internet last mile DHCP assigned IP really is. It's not uncommon to go many months or a year with having it always renew to the same address. That, combined with all the fingerprinting mentioned in the article...

Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#6
post #4

It's important to know that the mentioned "resistFingerprinting" breaks a lot of the web. Examples include the back button, uploading photos on some websites uploads random data instead of the photo, etc.

If it breaks uploading a photo, it’s because the page unnecessarily copies the image into a and then tries to upload the data from the instead of the original image.

Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#7
post #2

If you don't pay attention to it you might be surprised how non dynamic your residential internet last mile DHCP assigned IP really is. It's not uncommon to go many months or a year with having it always renew to the same address. That, combined with all the fingerprinting mentioned in the article...

This would be one of the things about IPv6, we'd have lifetime fixed IP addresses (or address ranges at least). Wouldn't we?

Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#8
post #6
post #4

It's important to know that the mentioned "resistFingerprinting" breaks a lot of the web. Examples include the back button, uploading photos on some websites uploads random data instead of the photo, etc.

If it breaks uploading a photo, it’s because the page unnecessarily copies the image into a and then tries to upload the data from the instead of the original image.

> the page unnecessarily copies the image into a and then tries to upload the data from the instead of the original image.

Surely there could be valid reasons for doing so?

I imagine for example that:

1. It ensures the selected file is a valid image before uploading it

2. It strips meta data like GPS position from the image before uploading it

3. It could reduce the size of the image, by either scaling it down, or compressing it more, or both, before uploading it

Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#9
post #6
post #4

It's important to know that the mentioned "resistFingerprinting" breaks a lot of the web. Examples include the back button, uploading photos on some websites uploads random data instead of the photo, etc.

If it breaks uploading a photo, it’s because the page unnecessarily copies the image into a and then tries to upload the data from the instead of the original image.

It's necessary if you have filters in the upload flow, like Instagram does (which is why it breaks.)

Or it might not be strictly necessary, but Instagram does it anyway.

Re: Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought

#10
post #6
post #4

It's important to know that the mentioned "resistFingerprinting" breaks a lot of the web. Examples include the back button, uploading photos on some websites uploads random data instead of the photo, etc.

If it breaks uploading a photo, it’s because the page unnecessarily copies the image into a and then tries to upload the data from the instead of the original image.

There are many perfectly valid reasons to do that. It’s a lot more scalable to resize images client side rather than server side and using a canvas is one of the simplest ways to achieve that.
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