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Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

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Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#71

Post by dmos62 »

ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

> always-negative/outrage attitude

That's a meaningful insight. I think Web is in a place now where anyone with technical insight is frustrated. Yes, frustration is the right word. And confused. And it's this mix of confusion and frustration that has people going around bad mouthing all browsers, or at least I think so. Mozilla Firefox is the only significant browser that has the economic incentives to take care of privacy (there's no debate about that right? well there could be Safari, but it's closed source). I'm pretty close to chanting "the end is nigh". If you compare the resources available to the privacy-invading businesses, and the privacy-preserving businesses, how does it look? Or maybe regulative action will be taken? 100x more restrictive and better thought through than GDPR should be enough. Somehow I don't see that happening. Someone with a lighter outlook, chime in.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#72

Post by ggreer »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #49
Twirrim wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, uBlock Origin actually stops that site from working, seems to break the fingerprinting step. If i disable uBlock, I get 16.63 bits of identifying information. Likewise the canvas fingerprint is the biggest, in my case 1 in 101154.

Can anyone explain why canvas fingerprinting is so difficult to eradicate without breaking canvas?

You can draw with different fonts and background colors, then grab the raw pixel values and hash them. The hash will be different depending on the versions of fonts installed, the OS, the GPU, the browser's text rendering algorithms, and the subpixel order/orientation of the display.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting for more info.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#73

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ggreer wrote: post #72
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain why canvas fingerprinting is so difficult to eradicate without breaking canvas?

You can draw with different fonts and background colors, then grab the raw pixel values and hash them. The hash will be different depending on the versions of fonts installed, the OS, the GPU, the browser's text rendering algorithms, and the subpixel order/orientation of the display. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting for more info.

Thanks. I'd read the Wikipedia page, I'm just not clear why this process is allowed (or more importantly, why it can't be removed).

Is there a legitimate use case for being able to read back pixels?

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#74

Post by lcao »

ziddoap wrote: post #70
Kiro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure you would never say the same thing about Google.

What are you basing this assumption on? The funny thing is, no matter how I reply to your comment I lose by default. If I say I have - you say I'm lying. If I say I haven't, your point is proven. What option do I have? Perhaps you'd like to chime in on the discussion at hand rather than speculating on my personal life.

You have the option of not making stupid comments defending the indefensible.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#75

Post by [deleted] »

Perceptes wrote: post #66
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17.62 bits on firefox, 11.0 on Tor, 17.63 on chrome. On firefox, the big contributors are HTTP headers (my native language is announced), hash of WebGl fingerprint and time zone. On Tor big contributors are hash of webGL fingerprint, screen size. On chrome, they are system fonts, hash of canvas fingerprint, user agent, and time zone. I am not too concerned about the fingerprinting in firefox since I have strict block…

Similar results for me. Does anyone know if it's possible to turn off WebGL, and if so, how? AFAIK I never use it for anything and I'd rather have increased anonymity. (Assuming disabling it prevents it from being used for fingerprinting.) Edit: Answering my own question. In `about:config`, change the `webgl.disabled` preference from `false` to `true`. This reduced the "bits of identifying information" from WebGL fro…

[deleted]

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#76

Post by [deleted] »

lcao wrote: post #74
ziddoap wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you basing this assumption on? The funny thing is, no matter how I reply to your comment I lose by default. If I say I have - you say I'm lying. If I say I haven't, your point is proven. What option do I have? Perhaps you'd like to chime in on the discussion at hand rather than speculating on my personal life.

You have the option of not making stupid comments defending the indefensible.

[deleted]

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#77

Post by kube-system »

ycombonator wrote: post #52

Is there a test to check whether a site is fingerprinting ?

There are likely some blacklists for known fingerprinting libraries. But, there's nothing that can tell you for sure, because it is also possible to fingerprint entirely server-side using the information your browser voluntarily transmits or contextual information about your connection.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#78

Post by lcao »

[deleted] wrote: post #76
lcao wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the option of not making stupid comments defending the indefensible.

[deleted]

No need to attack your comment, only in Hacker News, the jerkers of the failed Mozilla Corporation, you'd read a comment as stupid as yours at the top. And all because they hate Google.

"Yeah it's true the Mozilla Corporation is terribly mismanaged and has a story of stabbing you at the back. But just trust them again! They won't do it again. For sure."

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#79

Post by PaulBGD_ »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #73
ggreer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can draw with different fonts and background colors, then grab the raw pixel values and hash them. The hash will be different depending on the versions of fonts installed, the OS, the GPU, the browser's text rendering algorithms, and the subpixel order/orientation of the display. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting for more info.

Thanks. I'd read the Wikipedia page, I'm just not clear why this process is allowed (or more importantly, why it can't be removed). Is there a legitimate use case for being able to read back pixels?

A lot actually, for example you can do easy image resizing (like taking a selected image and resizing before uploading to the server.)

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#80

Post by dmos62 »

ziddoap wrote: post #70
Kiro wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure you would never say the same thing about Google.

What are you basing this assumption on? The funny thing is, no matter how I reply to your comment I lose by default. If I say I have - you say I'm lying. If I say I haven't, your point is proven. What option do I have? Perhaps you'd like to chime in on the discussion at hand rather than speculating on my personal life.

Kiro does have a point. Not you personally, but in general the popular opinion is that Google is morally bad, while Mozilla is good. I think it would currently be very unpopular to say that Google just made some bad decisions, as in it's not actually "bad", because it would muddy the one-dimensional good-bad discourse to which most of these mainstream problems descend to. Note I'm not actually passing judgements, just talking about group think.
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