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Firefox expands fingerprint protections

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#41

Post by kube-system »

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #20
dmix wrote: post #15

I use FF and I paid for NYTimes. I was logged in, yet NYTimes constantly flagged my browser with a persistent captcha I couldn't bypass for months (across 2 different machines). It thought I was a bot because of the privacy features. So I cancelled my subscription using my phone.

Is there a reason to force all these bot checks on logged in accounts that are paying you money other than insanity? Surely you could just have a max monthly bandwidth limit per account and just stop worrying about this?

I don't think there is any value of [x] for the monthly bandwidth usage you could pick that malicious users cannot afford, but legitimate users could not hit.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#42

Post by kvirani »

rpdillon wrote: post #25
deltoidmaximus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason to force all these bot checks on logged in accounts that are paying you money other than insanity? Surely you could just have a max monthly bandwidth limit per account and just stop worrying about this?

The New York Times is like a microcosm of the publishing industry. They seem to spend the majority of their effort on protecting their intellectual property. I'd rather they use those resources to improve their reporting, particularly about technical topics, but alas.

We just down know from the outside how much revenue they would lose by redirecting that effort though.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#43

Post by nalekberov »

vablings wrote: post #35
nalekberov wrote: post #31

Fingerprinting is nearly impossible to resist these days anyways, no matter which technics Firefox uses to reduce it, and sometimes it actually makes the browser appear more unique. Last time I tried everything I could to prevent Firefox from calling home, it was still requesting Mozilla servers. Though I haven’t given up, my plan is disabling it at source code level and build my own release.

I think this is a nihilistic view. The browser ultimately sends only what the webpage requests. If we gut the ability for websites to request large swathes of information such as every supported TLS Cipher suite and also better protections such as GDPR to make it illegal for browsers to track this information unless a user signs up and also not gating information behind said sign-ups

I couldn't quite catch what you meant, but

> The browser ultimately sends only what the webpage requests.

You should do research before making such claims.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#44

Post by abawany »

dmix wrote: post #15

I use FF and I paid for NYTimes. I was logged in, yet NYTimes constantly flagged my browser with a persistent captcha I couldn't bypass for months (across 2 different machines). It thought I was a bot because of the privacy features. So I cancelled my subscription using my phone.

when I used to subscribe to the nyt, I had to block a few of their endpoints to kill the awful popups and etc. This, the further ads for paying subscribers, and a host of other issues led me to drop them as well though.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#45

Post by firefax »

xnx wrote: post #11

This is a good use of Firefox resources. Unfortunately Firefox is at a natural disadvantage for fingerprinting by virtue of being used by such a small number of users.

>This is a good use of Firefox resources. Unfortunately Firefox is at a natural disadvantage for fingerprinting by virtue of being used by such a small number of users.

I'd rather be trackable but secure -- the big draw for me is NoScript. Paired with uBlock, I'm safe from malvertising[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#Examples_of_malic...

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#46

Post by tgv »

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…

You could try to use profiles instead of private browsing. It keeps things separated.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#47

Post by philipallstar »

vablings wrote: post #35
nalekberov wrote: post #31

Fingerprinting is nearly impossible to resist these days anyways, no matter which technics Firefox uses to reduce it, and sometimes it actually makes the browser appear more unique. Last time I tried everything I could to prevent Firefox from calling home, it was still requesting Mozilla servers. Though I haven’t given up, my plan is disabling it at source code level and build my own release.

I think this is a nihilistic view. The browser ultimately sends only what the webpage requests. If we gut the ability for websites to request large swathes of information such as every supported TLS Cipher suite and also better protections such as GDPR to make it illegal for browsers to track this information unless a user signs up and also not gating information behind said sign-ups

> and also not gating information behind said sign-ups

"People should do work for free" isn't very workable.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#48

Post by II2II »

SoftTalker wrote: post #38
cowpig wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox because it is better than Chrome, which is the only alternative I see. Do you use something else?

Almost all "alternative" browsers are Chromium based or Gecko/Firefox based. If there are any that are truly scratch-built other than the text-based browsers such as lynx or w3m I'd be interested to hear about them. I'd guess they are extremely limited in features.

The graphical alternatives that I am aware of are extremely limited, such as NetSurf.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#49

Post by kube-system »

vablings wrote: post #35
nalekberov wrote: post #31

Fingerprinting is nearly impossible to resist these days anyways, no matter which technics Firefox uses to reduce it, and sometimes it actually makes the browser appear more unique. Last time I tried everything I could to prevent Firefox from calling home, it was still requesting Mozilla servers. Though I haven’t given up, my plan is disabling it at source code level and build my own release.

I think this is a nihilistic view. The browser ultimately sends only what the webpage requests. If we gut the ability for websites to request large swathes of information such as every supported TLS Cipher suite and also better protections such as GDPR to make it illegal for browsers to track this information unless a user signs up and also not gating information behind said sign-ups

>The browser ultimately sends only what the webpage requests.

You've got 6 layers under your browser before that data is sent -- some of those are useful for fingerprinting. Also, browser behavior and feature sets are not and likely will never be 100% uniform.

> GDPR to make it illegal for browsers to track this information

Unfortunately the internet is global and people outside of the reach of those jurisdictions can just exist outside of the reach of those laws. Consider the existing landscape of malicious internet traffic and scams which are already illegal in almost every country -- they are still a widespread problem.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#50

Post by bigbadfeline »

kube-system wrote: post #41
deltoidmaximus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason to force all these bot checks on logged in accounts that are paying you money other than insanity? Surely you could just have a max monthly bandwidth limit per account and just stop worrying about this?

I don't think there is any value of [x] for the monthly bandwidth usage you could pick that malicious users cannot afford, but legitimate users could not hit.

That's what early warnings are for. It's an easy problem to solve... except by the NYT.
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