Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox expands fingerprint protections

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 177 posts

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#91

Post by godelski »

kube-system wrote: post #17
prism56 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So when you try resist fingerprinting. If you dont go all the way you're at risk of making your differentiations smaller?

As an oversimplified example: If a website has 100 visitors, and 99 of them use Chrome, and 1 user uses Firefox, it doesn't matter how good their fingerprinting resistance is, they're always the one using Firefox. https://xkcd.com/1105/

Firefox is low on browser count but it's still around 4%[0]. That's enough that there will be lots of collisions. Even a small percent of a very large number is a very large number

[0] https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#92

Post by kube-system »

port11 wrote: post #73
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.

There was a commenter some time back showing that browser statistics were easy to skew. Safari and Firefox are less likely to show up in analytics, so website owners think they're less important than they really are. Conflating client-side with server-side analytics showed quite a gap.

Most of the people who are just looking at browser statistics for the purpose of managing a website are using simple tools that just simply collect data from user agent strings. Determining browser from this isn't 100% straightforward, but it's enough to give website operators a rough idea of what browser to target. This data was more important in the days when everything wasn't Chrome/Android/iOS, and it actually mattered what version of IE your users were running.

If you're doing fingerprinting for tracking purposes, you're gonna be tracking a lot more in-depth data.

But in the end, there are pretty much three types of Internet user today: 1. The person who uses the default browser installed on their device. 2. The user who always downloads Chrome when they first get a new computer. and 3. Nerds who do something else.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#93

Post by recursive4 »

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…

Out of curiousity, how would you steelman the argument that fingerprinting is no different than a store owner, standing behind the counter, taking note of the faces of who enters his store, and maintaining a log?

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#94

Post by HackerThemAll »

yborg wrote: post #56

In my case the single largest contributor to my fingerprint is ... canvas size. I run full screen with a custom Firefox setup that basically makes my canvas size unique :/ The "protection" Firefox uses for this is to always open a new window at a default size, which does nothing in my case since my toolbar config still makes the canvas size unique. It would be really useful to have something that dithers the reported…

Now I understand why I'm getting paywall limits even in private browsing :) I use Tree Style Tab, so my canvas is also of unusual size and ratio. I guess I can try making it more narrow or wider to combat that :)

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#96

Post by AstralStorm »

recursive4 wrote: post #93
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…

Out of curiousity, how would you steelman the argument that fingerprinting is no different than a store owner, standing behind the counter, taking note of the faces of who enters his store, and maintaining a log?

The store owner visibly responds to the customers differently. Fingerprinting is invisible. It's more like the store owner recording everyone on hidden camera.

So no, you cannot steelman a broken analogy.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#97

Post by kube-system »

godelski wrote: post #88
kube-system wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoofed UAs are easily detected. And if you are spoofing your UA you are among a very small subset of users.

Easy to detect but companies are lazy. I remember when Netflix first worked for Linux on chrome but not Firefox. I changed my agent and was good to go. After some months I emailed them asking to lift the agent block. They assured me they weren't blocking by agent. I sent them screenshots. They doubled down. So I said ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and just kept using the agent until they unblocked it

Absolutely, but the parent was speaking about privacy. Access is a different story, because you can test different user agent strings, and immediately determine whether you get access. By contrast, you can't change a user agent string and readily determine whether or not you've broken someone's ability to track you.

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#98

Post by godelski »

rogueparitybit wrote: post #83
DavideNL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably mean Temporary Containers…? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

I've recently switched from Containerise + Temporary Containers to Auto Containers. Brand new addon, but the dev is responsive and IMO it works much better for creating new containers on the fly as you browse. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/auto-containe... https://github.com/Shajirr/FF-Auto-Containers

That's really handy! I like that it handles domains automatically

Edit: Seems to break ad blocking and there's some issues with login. Such as adding a container for YouTube requires also doing *.google.com since that's how the login is handled. Interesting and I'll keep playing around with it

Re: Firefox expands fingerprint protections

#99

Post by sudobash1 »

recursive4 wrote: post #93
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…

Out of curiousity, how would you steelman the argument that fingerprinting is no different than a store owner, standing behind the counter, taking note of the faces of who enters his store, and maintaining a log?

To make that analogy closer to the Internet reality, I would say that Internet tracking is more like a cabal of shop-keepers, librarians, neighbors, utility pole workers, and so on who are keeping track of all the faces, all their habits, what they look at, what they say, who they interact with, and share this information amongst themselves, recording it in perpetuity. They also share details with the police and anyone who cares to purchase them.

When you talk about a "shopkeeper" it gives it a small community charm. The Internet is anything but that.

Post reply on HN