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Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

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Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#81

I use a browser that does not support favicon Wondering why users of popular browsers believe favicon is needed (I'm assuming users asked the authors of those browsers for favicon)

Popular browsers support tabs. When you have many tabs open, it's hard to show a meaningful title for each one. An icon takes up less place and is easier to scan for visually.

Mozilla Firefox doesn't shrink tabs any further, but instead lets the tab list go off screen and you can scroll. I think that is a Google Chrome specific thing.

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#82
post #80

Totally unrelated, but what I found interesting: the README hasn’t been touched for years, yet it looks entirely AI generated. Including the commits. People actually wrote READMEs / commit messages like that before? Have I been living under a rock?

Where do you think the AI training data comes from? Emoji-heavy documentation/commit messages always seem very popular in JS projects, as this is seems to be the project of a 12 (Edit: It's 20, misread) year old I'm not too surprised that it's a bit unusual compared to others.

Ah, I didn’t know this was made by a child, that makes sense then.

I knew this was part of the JS community, I just didn’t realize AI was literally 1:1 using the same style.

I guess didn’t realize that the NodeJS community was so dominant.

Or maybe is it because the NodeJS community always had a style of “many small libraries”, which causes them to be over represented?

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#83
post #80

Totally unrelated, but what I found interesting: the README hasn’t been touched for years, yet it looks entirely AI generated. Including the commits. People actually wrote READMEs / commit messages like that before? Have I been living under a rock?

Where do you think the AI training data comes from? Emoji-heavy documentation/commit messages always seem very popular in JS projects, as this is seems to be the project of a 12 (Edit: It's 20, misread) year old I'm not too surprised that it's a bit unusual compared to others.

The README.md says the author was twenty years old when it was written. Am I missing something here?

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#84
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the AI training data comes from? Emoji-heavy documentation/commit messages always seem very popular in JS projects, as this is seems to be the project of a 12 (Edit: It's 20, misread) year old I'm not too surprised that it's a bit unusual compared to others.

The README.md says the author was twenty years old when it was written. Am I missing something here?

I read it as twelve. My bad!

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#87

FYI for anyone that cares: this attack vector has been patched by browsers years ago, fairly soon after this was released. https://github.com/jonasstrehle/supercookie/issues/30

The link shows Chrome patched and unpatched this.

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#88
post #37
post #2

I was sure this has been a thing for a while, either that or safari has a UI bug since forever. I regularly get the wrong favicon in specific sites, for example ars technica favicon in reddit

I get the wrong for HN in mobile Chrome

So a similar favicon bug exists in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Impressive!

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular browsers support tabs. When you have many tabs open, it's hard to show a meaningful title for each one. An icon takes up less place and is easier to scan for visually.

Mozilla Firefox doesn't shrink tabs any further, but instead lets the tab list go off screen and you can scroll. I think that is a Google Chrome specific thing.

I've just tried and when I open a bunch of new tabs, Firefox truncates the "new tab" text to "new" and a Firefox logo. Same thing happens with other titles.

(Then at some point it stops truncating and scrolls off the screen.)

Re: Supercookie: Browser Fingerprinting via Favicon (2021)

#90

At some point we need actual consequences for sites that intentionally hide their tracking. It should be criminal. It is stalking and has real world consequences. Just because an exploit exists doesn't mean it should be used. That logic is like saying it is OK to break into a house because the lock on the door was weak. If we don't get real protections, at what point does it become justified to go offensive against s…

Isn't this covered by GDPR?

GDPR has a massive exploit where you can do whatever you want as long as you declare it "legitimate interest".
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