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The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

kevinboone.me

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Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#101

Post by gruez »

gweinberg wrote: post #85

For a fingerprint to be useful it must not only be unique but also persistent. If I have a process that randomly installs and deletes wacky fonts, I'm unique at any given time, but the me of today can't be linked to the me of tomorrow, right?

>If I have a process that randomly installs and deletes wacky fonts, I'm unique at any given time, but the me of today can't be linked to the me of tomorrow, right?

See: https://xkcd.com/1105/

Services with a large enough fingerprinting database can filter out implausible values and flag you as faking your fingerprint, which is itself fingerprintable.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#102

Post by stego-tech »

Sandboxing in containers and manually exempting specific security tokens is arguably one of the better steps we can take in the immediate term, as are random agent strings and returning fake data for common prompts. Of course that only works in the immediate, because this, like advertising in general, is an arms race at the moment.

This feels like a regulatory question, not a technical one. We've repeatedly proven that with math and code alone, we can fingerprint and identify almost every unique person on the planet, given enough data points. The long-term solution seems like it should be severe consequences for data breaches (as in, corporation-destroying penalties for disclosure of PII, including fingerprint data) such that everyone only collects the data they need to provide the service in question and not a single bit more, deleting it as soon as it's no longer necessary. Right now there's no consequence if Google or Meta disclose huge swaths of user data, and thus no disincentive to collecting as much as they possibly can.

Punish the leaking of data, and suddenly you've raised it's cost to the point that casual players will nope out entirely. From there, it's the eternal back and forth of governments waffling between business and electorate interests.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#103

Post by poorman »

gweinberg wrote: post #85

For a fingerprint to be useful it must not only be unique but also persistent. If I have a process that randomly installs and deletes wacky fonts, I'm unique at any given time, but the me of today can't be linked to the me of tomorrow, right?

It's likely that yes, you will end up with an alias that links you because of a cookie somewhere, or a finger print of the elliptic curve when do do a SSL handshake, or any number of other ways.

The ironic thing is that because of GDPR and CCPA, ad tech companies got really good at "anonymizing" your data. So even if you were to somehow not have an alias linking your various anonymous profiles, you will still end up quickly bucketed into a persona (and multiple audiences) that resemble you quite well. And it's not multiple days of data we're talking about (although it could be), it's minutes and in the case of contextual multi-armed bandits, your persona is likely updates "within" a single page load and you are targeted in ~5ms within the request/response lifecycle of that page load.

The good news is that most data platforms don't keep data around for more than 90 days because then they are automatically compliant with "right to be forgotten" without having to service requests for removal of personal data.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#104

Post by alkonaut »

There is no good technical solution here. But the damage could be limited if browsers at least limited entropy somewhat. Stuff like reading back canvas contents should need user approval.

Just make sure it’s sufficiently illegal to keep this info. Find and make big visible examples of fining companies that trade in this info. If a company sells a product that fetches ads based on an ”identifier” their little js snippet computed then just pay them a visit. Fine both them and their customers to the max extent of the gdpr (or equivalent).

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#105

Post by charlie-83 »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #78
undeveloper wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tldr -- it's fine. MacOS Gatekeeper will create warnings about products that are not signed via the apple developer program, which is $99/year librewolf is an open source product, that is very strictly a "community" libre / FOSS project. naturally, having an individual take up notarization assumedly, you are using brew -- brew recently decided to stop supporting / deprecate all casks that does not pass gatekeeper che…

Why would I trust any software that doesn’t pass the gatekeeper test? Even if it claims to be “open source” with links to some code repo there is no guarantee the binary blob you are running was built using only that code and nothing else. Sure even with the gatekeeper test you can’t be sure it’s built against only the claimed code but it does guarantee : 1) the binary hasn’t been modified since it was signed 2) the…

You could always just build it yourself from source if you are concerned.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#107

Post by imiric »

levocardia wrote: post #100
imiric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that advertising is more profitable doesn't mean that the PPV model is not viable. It could certainly be so. Every site could set their own price, or specific tiers, which users can agree to, just like they do with subscription-based content today. The problem is skewed incentives, of course. Advertising is acceptable to most users and easy to integrate, so why should website authors go out of their way to p…

Do you think the fact that NO major content websites (NYT, substack, WSJ, ...) have settled on a PPV model is simply because they haven't thought of it? Or is it more likely that the numbers absolutely do not work?

That's a false dichotomy.

I can't speak for all web sites, but I reckon a combination of factors could explain why such a solution hasn't been deployed:

1. Advertising is ubiquitous, easy to integrate, and provides a safe revenue stream.

2. There is little to no infrastructure for the PPV model. Whoever builds it would need to maintain their own version of it.

3. People expect the web to be "free". This is even true within technical crowds who understand that it's really not free. And a large part of that group doesn't mind advertising.

So, really, it would require a substantial amount of effort to implement, it would add additional friction to users, and ultimately only a minority would appreciate it.

Had this model been in place from the beginning of the web, things might be different today. Alas, if my grandma had wheels...

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#108

Post by fragmede »

levocardia wrote: post #100
imiric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that advertising is more profitable doesn't mean that the PPV model is not viable. It could certainly be so. Every site could set their own price, or specific tiers, which users can agree to, just like they do with subscription-based content today. The problem is skewed incentives, of course. Advertising is acceptable to most users and easy to integrate, so why should website authors go out of their way to p…

Do you think the fact that NO major content websites (NYT, substack, WSJ, ...) have settled on a PPV model is simply because they haven't thought of it? Or is it more likely that the numbers absolutely do not work?

Have any of them actually tried it though? If they have and I missed it, then I apologize, but I can't recall the NYT letting me read an article for $1 with zero friction via Apple or Google Pay or Stripe link or something. It they tried it and the numbers didn't work, that's one thing, but I don't recall that happening.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#110

Post by mixmastamyk »

lipbetfox wrote: post #88

I still haven't found a method that can fingerprint simple Firefox containers. I use automatic temporary containers as a rule, and rules for specific sites where I want to keep persistent sessions. I don't understand how temporary containers are still not a built-in Firefox feature, it seems like such a no-brainer solution for privacy.

Isn't the semi-recent per-site cookie jar most of this functionality?
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