• tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    After reading these reports of intensified fingerprinting I decided to block all scripts on my browser using uBlock. Can’t do much regarding the IP tho

  • nyankas@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I unfortunately can’t really see how a browser could still be nice to use and properly resist fingerprinting.

    The site https://amiunique.org/fingerprint tries to fingerprint your browser and lists the used attributes along with their uniqueness within their dataset. And while a browser could pretty reliably lie about its User Agent or Platform, it’s often just necessary for a modern website to know, for example, what your view-port’s resolution is or what kind of audio/video codecs your device supports. Going through my own results, I’d say combining these necessary data points is probably enough to identify me, even though I’m pretty privacy-conscious.

    Maybe I’m overly pessimistic, but I think preventing fingerprinting would need a regulatory instead of a technical solution. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem very likely anytime soon.

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      There are extentions for Firefox that randomise most of that. They add random supported codecs for example, enough to make it believable, not enough to make it a unique combination.
      It’s not perfect, nothing is, but it seems to be good enough.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Browser?

      Lol they own Android…it’s the entire os. They’re fingerprinting every android phone.

    • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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      2 days ago

      I’d say combining these necessary data points is probably enough to identify me

      The EFF has had a couple of websites that would profile you on exactly this data, so you’re completely correct in that even the basic normal required metadata is more than enough to identify you pretty well.

      coveryourtracks.eff.org is where it’s living now, and a quick glance shows that just using browser capabilities and such is absolutely enough to identify me.

    • rainrain@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I’ve been using browsers for a couple of decades without digital fingerprinting and it’s nice enough for me. I see no need to make it nicer.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Such as?

        Every browser can be fingerprinted, even Tor browser, which goes out of its way to resist fingerprinting. The only way to really avoid fingerprinting is to not use JavaScript, which is extremely limiting.

  • kbal@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Perhaps this will motivate makers of web browsers to finally get serious about making fingerprinting less easy. Looking at you, Mozilla.

      • shininghero@pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        Yes, but with a few caveats. Last time I used the ‘Resist Fingerprinting’ option, it made window resizing funky and some sites flat out rendered wrong.
        It needs some polish and some user controls.

        • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          That’s the tradeoff you have to make. Your window size is a good fingerprint, so spoofing the size makes sense. But websites that need to window size for legitimate reasons are breaking.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          How else could it be? The window size directly identifies you AND determines the page layout.