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Test browser for web tracking – EFF

coveryourtracks.eff.org

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Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#11

Post by upon_drumhead »

einpoklum wrote: post #9
anonymouse008 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I agree with the calculation. Basically they use each variable as independent when they are by nature not - as in if you have iPhone in the headers, you’ll probably have certain ram and gpu hashes. So those aren’t necessarily fully independent bits of info.

Oh, no, they treat the variables as fully dependent. That's why they take the maximum over the fields, not the sum nor some kind of \Prod_i(1-p_i) - type thing.

It doesn’t take the maximum. It says I have 14.53 bits of identifying information, however the max listed is my time zone offset providing 8.24 Bits of identifying information.

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#12

Post by qweqwe14 »

Remember that trying to make a browser like Chromium or Firefox hard to fingerprint is harder than it seems.

There's a lot of stuff you need to change, including fonts, screen resolution, system memory, user agent details (some browsers also add Sec-CH-UA strings), timezone, along with things like WebGL fingerprinting etc

It's also worth noting that you can sometimes actually make yourself more fingerprintable by not properly hiding something, like changing your UA in HTTP requests but not in JavaScript as well. If a website detects such a "quirk", it would be able to fingerprint you with a lot more precision.

TL;DR If you really want to stay anonymous and not worry about fingerprinting and trackers — use Tor Browser. It was specifically designed so that everyone has the same fingerprint, and has things like letterboxing to hide resolution etc. It's unlikely you'd be able to do a better job than Tor Browser by modifying your own browser.

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#15

Post by jerbear4328 »

syx wrote: post #6

It's scary how much information browsers give out for free, I wish I could use a browser that completely blocks and limits fingerprinting but nowadays I can barely watch YouTube or completing an online purchase flow with ad-blockers enabled

Tor Browser is really good at this. It was designed for the purpose of limiting tracking, both by IP and fingerprinting. Every user that downloads and runs Tor Browser looks perfectly identical to any website they visit, and hitting the button to reset your identity truly does that. Downside is it's really slow compared to just using your network directly, but that's the price you have to pay for privacy atm.

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#17

Post by BramLovesYams »

jerbear4328 wrote: post #15
syx wrote: post #6

It's scary how much information browsers give out for free, I wish I could use a browser that completely blocks and limits fingerprinting but nowadays I can barely watch YouTube or completing an online purchase flow with ad-blockers enabled

Tor Browser is really good at this. It was designed for the purpose of limiting tracking, both by IP and fingerprinting. Every user that downloads and runs Tor Browser looks perfectly identical to any website they visit, and hitting the button to reset your identity truly does that. Downside is it's really slow compared to just using your network directly, but that's the price you have to pay for privacy atm.

One thing that is important in keeping this "identical" browser appearance to potential trackers is not changing the size of the browser window once you open Tor.

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#18

Post by themoonisachees »

BramLovesYams wrote: post #17
jerbear4328 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor Browser is really good at this. It was designed for the purpose of limiting tracking, both by IP and fingerprinting. Every user that downloads and runs Tor Browser looks perfectly identical to any website they visit, and hitting the button to reset your identity truly does that. Downside is it's really slow compared to just using your network directly, but that's the price you have to pay for privacy atm.

One thing that is important in keeping this "identical" browser appearance to potential trackers is not changing the size of the browser window once you open Tor.

Hasn't this largely been fixed? I remember reading about how the tor browser would fake its window size to be from a predefined set that's somewhat near your current window size

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#19

Post by rkta » 

  Our tests indicate that you have you have strong protection against Web tracking.

  Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 191,640 tested in the past 45 days.

  User Agent
  w3m/0.5.3+git20230718
  Bits of identifying information: 17.55
  One in x browsers have this value: 191640.0
So I have strong protection by being basically unique? Not sure what this means.

Re: Test browser for web tracking – EFF

#20

Post by crtasm »

themoonisachees wrote: post #18
BramLovesYams wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that is important in keeping this "identical" browser appearance to potential trackers is not changing the size of the browser window once you open Tor.

Hasn't this largely been fixed? I remember reading about how the tor browser would fake its window size to be from a predefined set that's somewhat near your current window size

That's correct, if you resize the window you can see the page area switching between the predefined sizes.
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