Firefox to add Tor Browser anti-fingerprinting technique called letterboxing

Post by capitol_ » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 12:28 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #130

nindalf wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this tendency on HN - if this person/entity does something, I suspect it must be bad or selfish. On the subject of HTTPS - do you think the interests of ordinary consumers are in any way served by continuing on HTTP? Countless websites, even those accepting login credentials used to think that it was acceptable to not take the trouble to set up HTTPS. The only thing the operators of these websites cared abo…

> Apparently, the "biggest reason" for the people working at Google pushing this because it was good for Google. I mean, when I do stuff at my job, I also do things that are good for the company that pays me. That's the job, right? The problem is that Google has positioned itself in a way where things that are good for Google might be bad for humanity as a whole.

Post by tyingq » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 12:35 PM UTC

c0nducktr wrote: post #100

tyingq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that's the biggest reason Google was so interested in "https everywhere". That removed detailed browsing visibility from a lot of entities, but not Google.

Can you elaborate on that? Are you talking about the https everywhere extension from the EFF, because I wasn't aware Google had a part in that.

Post by tyingq » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #129

tyingq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that's the biggest reason Google was so interested in "https everywhere". That removed detailed browsing visibility from a lot of entities, but not Google.

I've seen this tendency on HN - if this person/entity does something, I suspect it must be bad or selfish. On the subject of HTTPS - do you think the interests of ordinary consumers are in any way served by continuing on HTTP? Countless websites, even those accepting login credentials used to think that it was acceptable to not take the trouble to set up HTTPS. The only thing the operators of these websites cared abo…

Post by patrickaljord » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 12:43 PM UTC

maxencecornet wrote: post #168

patrickaljord wrote: post #156

At this point Firefox should just merge with Tor if they want to market themselves as the pro-privacy browser. Right now I just use Chrome when I'm using my real identity for work and shopping and social media anyway as it's a very good browser and supported everywhere and has an open source version through Chromium. When I need actual privacy, I just use Tor which supports most sites and is way more protective of my…

>May switch to Brave in the future In the futur? Tor tabs are already a feature of Brave, as of today

Post by SamuelAdams » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #91

cronix wrote: post #5

> The general idea is that "letterboxing" will mask the window's real dimensions by keeping the window width and height at multiples of 200px and 100px during the resize operation --generating the same window dimensions for all users-- and then adding a "gray space" at the top, bottom, left, or right of the current page. > The advertising code, which listens to window resize events, then reads the generic dimensions,…

Presumably the implementation is smarter than being defeated by this easy trick, but I too wonder how it works. > Finally, an extra zoom was applied to the viewport in fullscreen and maximized modes to use as much of the screen as possible and minimize the size of the empty margins. In that case, the window had a "letterbox" (margins at top and bottom only) or "pillbox" (margins at left and right only) appearance. wi…