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> go to about:config and setting privacy.resistFingerprinting = true in your Firefox browser Two questions jump to mind: Why isn't this the default in Firefox? What is the downside? I.e., what can break by enabling this parameter?
Browser fingerprinting is one of those things that should be outright illegal - it is far more of a threat than tracking cookies ever were. But it hasn't permeated the public consciousness like cookies have, so regulators seem to ignore it.
This is a technical problem, not a legal one. The solution is for browsers to provide users with the ability to limit the information being sent. There's no need for the vast majority of websites to know my OS, number of CPUs, screen or window size, or most of the other fingerprinting metrics.
I suppose one technical mitigation might be a permissions dialog when a script requests access to a high-risk API like canvas or WebGL. But that's unfortunately something that won't work for most users, who will just click through the dialog.
> go to about:config and setting privacy.resistFingerprinting = true in your Firefox browser Two questions jump to mind: Why isn't this the default in Firefox? What is the downside? I.e., what can break by enabling this parameter?
Here's what the settings do and what sort of side-effects you might experience:
Browser fingerprinting is one of those things that should be outright illegal - it is far more of a threat than tracking cookies ever were. But it hasn't permeated the public consciousness like cookies have, so regulators seem to ignore it.
This is a technical problem, not a legal one. The solution is for browsers to provide users with the ability to limit the information being sent. There's no need for the vast majority of websites to know my OS, number of CPUs, screen or window size, or most of the other fingerprinting metrics.
Not to mention the big players on the users’ team in the technical arms race (google, ms, apple) are also advertising companies.
By all means let’s solve it from the technical side - but also lets regulate privacy so everyone gets it not just people paranoid/technical enough to use the latest/best privacy respecting tools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
probably just ignored them. Aren't those privacy protections basically you saying "pretty please don't track me?"
If we're exploring the space of "they're lying" isn't a simpler explanation be that they're lying about their revenue?
Isn't fingerprinting covered by GDPR in a similar way to how cookies are? So in theory you should be able to opt out, at least as an EU user.
Those obnoxious "cookie" dialogs? Yes, they cover fingerprinting as well. E.g. some innocent company wants to keep your precise geolocation data for 12 years: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541 Cookie banners were never about cookies or privacy. The industry designed them with some very explicit goals in mind: to force users to opt-in to pervasive tracking, and to blame "how unusable web has become" on…
Would be curious how Brave handles fingerprinting, I’ll have to look into that.