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Show HN: I built a cross-browser extension that controls fingerprinting surfaces

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Re: Show HN: I built a cross-browser extension that controls fingerprinting surfaces

#11

Post by gruez »

tomaszjanusz wrote: post #7
gruez wrote: post #4

Anti-fingerprinting measures with configurable knobs is always going to be a risky proposition because those options themselves end up being a fingerprinting surface. It's better to take firefox/tor browser's approach and have a common profile eg. "resistfingerprinting" to get crowd anonymity.

This extension does not allow you to adjust how a given patch works - for the reasons you wrote. You are 100% right. This extension allows you to configure the availability of certain spoofed surfaces for specific sites. Moreover, this extension does not try to override the protections that Firefox uses, e.g. in the case of limits on the presentation of the amount of available RAM. Your opinion is completely correct…

>Moreover, this extension does not try to override the protections that Firefox uses, e.g. in the case of limits on the presentation of the amount of available RAM.

This seems contradicted by the screenshots, which lists options for "time", "canvas", and "screen". Firefox's RFP has protections for all of those. Not to mention it has "protections" for APIs that don't even exist on firefox.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...

Re: Show HN: I built a cross-browser extension that controls fingerprinting surfaces

#12

Post by tomaszjanusz »

gruez wrote: post #11
tomaszjanusz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This extension does not allow you to adjust how a given patch works - for the reasons you wrote. You are 100% right. This extension allows you to configure the availability of certain spoofed surfaces for specific sites. Moreover, this extension does not try to override the protections that Firefox uses, e.g. in the case of limits on the presentation of the amount of available RAM. Your opinion is completely correct…

>Moreover, this extension does not try to override the protections that Firefox uses, e.g. in the case of limits on the presentation of the amount of available RAM. This seems contradicted by the screenshots, which lists options for "time", "canvas", and "screen". Firefox's RFP has protections for all of those. Not to mention it has "protections" for APIs that don't even exist on firefox. https://developer.mozilla.or…

Firefox has some protections in the topics you mentioned, but it does not allow you to change things like time zone (and regional or language settings) per domain. This extension has such functions. That's what these switches are for.

As I wrote - the extension does not patch something that does not exist. I didn't mention it in the main post because the 4,000 character limit was simply too limiting for me. The text entry in AMO does not tell the user this either. Thanks for capturing one screenshot, as I simply had to mix up the collection of screenshots when I updated the extension's page - in fact, under Firefox, the configuration window does not present options related to Client Hints (also unavailable on the Mozilla platform) as well as the Battery Status API.

In the extension interface, you will find two places presenting protection details for those APIs with a "Not applicable" status. Configuration options for these items in the settings panel are not visible.

Thanks for pointing out this screenshot, as that wasn't my intention. If you look at the screenshot of the container options, you will see the actual feature set for Firefox. I've already deleted the screenshot, sorry for the confusion.

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