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We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

fingerprint.com

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Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#231

Post by spelledwrong »

firefax wrote: post #217
spelledwrong wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are aware that EFF has a project that used to be named after a pedophile on this subject You bring this up like it's a well known incident, but my googling can find no evidence of it? The only reason not say the name of the project would be if it's common knowledge, but it's not? ChatGPT research reckons you're making it up, and I'd be curious if you have evidence to the contrary?

It used to be called Panoptoclik (sp?), a reference to Foucault's theory of the panopticon. Focault's extracurriculars are well documented and not everything is an "incident" -- it's a thread on fingerprinting. People who study that are aware what is now called "cover your tracks", and people who do post grads tend to be well rounded enough to have read a bit of philosophy, or at least, they did in my day. So what ha…

Funny you mention Wikipedia

You said it was “named after a pedophile”, that is wrong

>>The word panopticon derives from the Greek word for "all seeing" – panoptes.

The concept was invented by Jeremy Bentham, who died before Foucault was born.

Interesting that you named your HN account after a famous homophobe.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#232

Post by tdeck »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #199
bfivyvysj wrote: post #158

I learned enough about security years ago that there's basically zero chance you're secure and almost 100% chance someone is watch everything you do online. Whether they care is entirely separate.

Ah, yes, the "fuck it" approach to infosec.

It seems to have worked for Fiverr.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#233

Post by wholinator2 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #132
godelski wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most users seem to not care about ad tech/tracking I don't think this is true. Most people don't understand that they're being tracked. The ones that do generally don't understand to what extent. You tend to get one of two responses: surprise or apathy. When people say "what are you going to do?" They don't mean "I don't care" they mean "I feel powerless to do anything about it, so I'll convince myself to not care…

This is a lot of text to say that people don't recognize digital tracking as a threat, even when it is explained to them. Which is basically exactly what parent post you replied to said. People don't care. This is demonstrably true.

My read of the comment is that it's almost never actually fully explained to them. And that they would almost certainly care if they actually understood what was happening. That's my experience. Once you explain that it's more information than a private investigator tailing you all day, stealing your phone could gather people usually wise up to the fact that they actually don't like it.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#234

Post by goodpoint »

Cider9986 wrote: post #163

Being fingerprinted across Tor is different from being deanonymized—it basically just "psuedonomizes" you. You now have an identifier. It is a significant threat, but it is not hard to "psuedonomize" someone based on stylometry and some of the people with the highest threat model—operating an illegal site, will be pseudonymous anyway. Don't get your opsec advice from HN. Check whonix, qubes, grapheneos, kicksecure fo…

No, fingerprinting is a synonym of deanonymization.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#235

Post by goodpoint »

michaelt wrote: post #87
SirMaster wrote: post #44

I question why websites can even access all this info without asking or notifying the user. Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

Browser fingerprinting is an unintended side-effect of things it's sorta-kinda reasonable for browsers to provide. A user agent that says the browser's version? Reasonable enough. Being able to ask for fonts, if the system has them? Difficult to have font support without that. Getting the user's timezone, language and keyboard layout? Reasonable. The size of the screen, and the size of the browser window? Difficult t…

It's not reasonable for a website to find out about my browser version, OS, keyboard layout and a zillion other things, fuck this.

All these things should be opt-in and like blocked by GDPR.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#236

Post by keepamovin »

wolvoleo wrote: post #224
keepamovin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that BrowserBox is a commercial product and there's no free tier. Honestly, the reality of running remote browser infra and development is that a free version just gets instantly hammered by botnets, scrapers, and abuse. Keeping it paid is the only way to be sustainable. I see Neko brought up a lot, but honestly when I tried it a couple years ago it felt pretty clunky. It seems designed more for anime wa…

> Honestly, the reality of running remote browser infra and development is that a free version just gets instantly hammered by botnets, scrapers, and abuse. Keeping it paid is the only way to be sustainable. Ah but I'd want to run it myself anyway. I wouldn't want it hosted. Especially for browsing, I don't want someone else's systems looking over my shoulder. I avoid cloud stuff as much as possible in my personal li…

Totally, I get that. That's why BrowserBox is also self-hosted, and yes, has a Docker image, too! Not free nor foss, tho. But I do try to be flexible.

As to cloud - indeed, why would you want to trust a cloud provider with sensitive internal browsing? Also, providing a SaaS is a hassle, but I feel I must do it serve that side and enable those uses, some of which are cool.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#237

Post by tardedmeme »

autoexec wrote: post #154
zamadatix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users seem to not care about ad tech/tracking as much as technical users. Even further, most seem to want to enable more tracking to [protect the children or whatever the reason is] pretty regularly (at least in opinion polls about various legislation). ToR users are not at all like that + could be harmed in a very different way... so I think it's fair to frame them differently even if I'd personally say people…

> Most users seem to not care about ad tech/tracking as much as technical users. Part of the problem is the misconception that the data being collected is only being used to determine which ads to show them. Companies love to frame it that way because ultimately people don't actually care that much about which ads they get shown. The more people get educated on the real world/offline uses of the data they're handing…

Ad tracking data has been used to target ICE raids.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#240

Post by wolvoleo »

keepamovin wrote: post #236
wolvoleo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, the reality of running remote browser infra and development is that a free version just gets instantly hammered by botnets, scrapers, and abuse. Keeping it paid is the only way to be sustainable. Ah but I'd want to run it myself anyway. I wouldn't want it hosted. Especially for browsing, I don't want someone else's systems looking over my shoulder. I avoid cloud stuff as much as possible in my personal li…

Totally, I get that. That's why BrowserBox is also self-hosted, and yes, has a Docker image, too! Not free nor foss, tho. But I do try to be flexible. As to cloud - indeed, why would you want to trust a cloud provider with sensitive internal browsing? Also, providing a SaaS is a hassle, but I feel I must do it serve that side and enable those uses, some of which are cool.

Ohh I didn't realise that it's your product, sorry. It sounds interesting but I'm only a home user (in Europe with not much budget). I just use remote browsers now for navigating the complex patchwork of blocks in the EU. Some sites are blocked in holland, others in spain, etc.
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