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Firefox expands fingerprint protections

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#101

Post by kube-system »

godelski wrote: post #91
kube-system wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an oversimplified example: If a website has 100 visitors, and 99 of them use Chrome, and 1 user uses Firefox, it doesn't matter how good their fingerprinting resistance is, they're always the one using Firefox. https://xkcd.com/1105/

Firefox is low on browser count but it's still around 4%[0]. That's enough that there will be lots of collisions. Even a small percent of a very large number is a very large number [0] https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...

Of course.

However, if you're trying to search for somebody, and you're able to eliminate 96% of the data, you're in a much better position to accomplish your goal.

Whether or not you should care about this depends on what kind of tracking threats you're trying to avoid.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#102

Post by jrochkind1 »

nicce wrote: post #57

Unfortunately, Cloudflare and other protections will keep working even less than they used to. I have started to not use Cloudflare protected websites because they don’t work with Firefox. But that is a fight I am going to lose.

I'm sorry whatever problem you've run into, but it's definitely not true that no cloudflare protected websites work with any Firefox. You've run into something more specific, I guess.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#103

Post by godelski »

someothherguyy wrote: post #85

It would be nice to see Firefox implement a few features browsers like brave have, like being able to automatically clear cookies for a site when leaving it, and to make containers available when in private browsing, ah well.

This is pretty handy and I've been using it for years[0].

I like the idea of Brave but we have a bigger fight that requires us to have no chromium. Chromium winning is Google winning, allowing them to control the Internet. I don't want that power in any single entity's hands. So I do ask that more people switch to Firefox or Safari as those are the best options to fight back and have decent market shares (even if small). If we lose the internet we'll lose our privacy too

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#104

Post by kube-system »

Phelinofist wrote: post #86
kube-system wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an oversimplified example: If a website has 100 visitors, and 99 of them use Chrome, and 1 user uses Firefox, it doesn't matter how good their fingerprinting resistance is, they're always the one using Firefox. https://xkcd.com/1105/

But if another Firefox user comes they are indistinguishable from each other, while every Chrome user is uniquely identifiable, are they not?

> if another Firefox user comes they are indistinguishable from each other,

Even if every Firefox browser gave off the exact same fingerprint, that wouldn't make the network traffic indistinguishable between Firefox users. There is a lot of entropy that is provided by your network stack of your device, the networks you connect to in order to get to the end website, the behavior of your requests, etc.

Now, most websites aren't doing this kind of analysis. But it isn't unheard of or impossible. There are major websites that are known to do TLS fingerprinting.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#105

Post by MichaelNolan »

recursive4 wrote: post #93
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #14

I exclusively use private browsing, but I know that doesn't do much in preventing tracking, so it's nice to see this finally starting to roll out. The fact that I have to go to great lengths to browse anonymously - and companies desperately try to circumvent my genuine decision to opt out of their tracking - tells me everything I need to know about those companies. Words like sleezy, shady, and predatory come to mind…

Out of curiousity, how would you steelman the argument that fingerprinting is no different than a store owner, standing behind the counter, taking note of the faces of who enters his store, and maintaining a log?

The difference is scale and intent. A mom and pop store owner “remembering” my face versus big tech tracking is like comparing a nosy neighbor to the CIA.

One of them might peer out their window, the other will infiltrate every aspect of your life. One of them is bored, the other has no qualms about doing significant harm to you if it serves their interests.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#106

Post by glenstein »

recursive4 wrote: post #93
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #14

I exclusively use private browsing, but I know that doesn't do much in preventing tracking, so it's nice to see this finally starting to roll out. The fact that I have to go to great lengths to browse anonymously - and companies desperately try to circumvent my genuine decision to opt out of their tracking - tells me everything I need to know about those companies. Words like sleezy, shady, and predatory come to mind…

Out of curiousity, how would you steelman the argument that fingerprinting is no different than a store owner, standing behind the counter, taking note of the faces of who enters his store, and maintaining a log?

It's automated data processing at scale rather than a local mom and pop country general store. The profit seeking, decision making, management culture driving decisions is a fundamentally different relationship. Also I don't think store owners do that?

Rather than presupposing an analogy to something importantly different, I would propose that the steelman would be along the lines of noting that ads and hyperpersonalization are effective at meeting and predicting your needs, and steering you towards an interpretation of your own needs that finds their fulfillment in deepening a consumer relationship. And if you get steered into lock-in with one company's ecosystem, you get the convenience of a stack of vertically integrated services.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#107

Post by Liquix »

yborg wrote: post #56

In my case the single largest contributor to my fingerprint is ... canvas size. I run full screen with a custom Firefox setup that basically makes my canvas size unique :/ The "protection" Firefox uses for this is to always open a new window at a default size, which does nothing in my case since my toolbar config still makes the canvas size unique. It would be really useful to have something that dithers the reported…

to defeat canvas size fingerprinting in firefox:

about:config -> set privacy.resistFingerprinting to true

about:config -> create new boolean key privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing set to true

this will set your canvas to a common size which fits in the viewport and display a grey "letterbox" border in the surrounding space.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#108

Post by CWuestefeld »

harshreality wrote: post #71
nicce wrote: post #57

Unfortunately, Cloudflare and other protections will keep working even less than they used to. I have started to not use Cloudflare protected websites because they don’t work with Firefox. But that is a fight I am going to lose.

Symptoms? Is it limited to when a site has Cloudflare's more aggressive protection turned on? I haven't noticed any problems I've attributed to Cloudflare, and I use Firefox exclusively.

This matches my experience as well. As a FF user, I very occasionally encounter problems, but these don't seem to be correlated to their using CF protections. Much more often I find sites broken that rely on cloud domains with bad reputations, which my DNS filters block.

I was actually wondering if the stuff that Mozilla's talking about here will be used by bad bot people to try to circumvent CF's abuse protections. As I recall from when I was working with them, CF's service relies in part on being able to identify botnet attacks by doing its own fingerprinting.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#109

Post by cluckindan »

HackerThemAll wrote: post #95
cluckindan wrote: post #13

It’s a bit annoying that Firefox by default breaks all sites that use canvas imageData API. There is no permission for that, so no user-friendly way to ask for consent either.

Sites such as?

Offline friendly image editors for instance.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#110

Post by dzikimarian »

shevy-java wrote: post #21

I tested firefox recently. It had some AI summary button or something that was new. I instantly wanted to eliminate this from the UI but I don't know how to do that. I guess it is possible? But it probably requires some time and research; the thing I don't need or want this, it just takes away space. Then I remembered why I no longer use firefox. I believe we, as users, need to take back the open web. The days of som…

You have to click that button and option to hide is right there.
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