How anti-fingerprinting extensions tend to make fingerprinting easier
palant.info
Browser extensions claiming to protect against fingerprinting will typically result in more data available for fingerprinting.

While browser extensions are often suggested as a method to improve your privacy, they could make things way worse. I linked an article about the anti-fingerprint extensions however, every extension that you installed on your browser make you stand out more.

This happens even with adblocker extensions. First of all, enumeration badness it’s not a good approach against tracking, that’s why Tor browser doesn’t use any adblocker.

Site-specific or filter-based addons such as AdBlock Plus, Request Policy, Ghostery, Priv3, and Sharemenot are to be avoided. We believe that these addons do not add any real privacy to a proper implementation of the above privacy requirements, and that development efforts should be focused on general solutions that prevent tracking by all third parties, rather than a list of specific URLs or hosts.

Trying to resort to filter methods based on machine learning does not solve the problem either: they don’t provide a general solution to the tracking problem as they are working probabilistically. Even with a precision rate at 99% and a false positive rate at 0.1% trackers would be missed and sites would be wrongly blocked

Source.

Moreover, every site visited can detect every change you made including blocked domains and so, instead of achieve privacy you’ll stand out more. If you’re going to use and adblocker it’d be a good idea using only the standard filters.

  • soronixa
    4•3 years ago

    I understand your point, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use and ad-blocker or blocking third party cookies, but probably you’re going to make things worse instead of achieve actual privacy. Unfortunately, this is a sad reality. Blocking ads/trackers and third party cookies it would be a good approach only if the option was enabled by default in the browser. For example, Vanadium block third-party cookies by default, this is good because if all the users have the third-party cookies blocked then it’s way more difficult uniquely identify a single one. The same concept goes for ads & tracking.

    the crowd I’m trying to blend in are users who have enabled ressist fingerprinting, and I’m pretty sure anyone enabling RFP would be using at least uBlock and ClearURLs. I think you’ve mistaken anti-fingerprinting addons, those are the ones that make you stand out from other people with RFP.

    I also assume people who enable it, will disable javascript for sites they don’t trust, and js is needed for most fingerprinting. things like canvas fingerprint, screen, etc are protected by RFP so that users have similar fingerprints.

    No at all, blending with crowd is useful regardless the browser you’re going to use. If you blend out with the crowd fingerprint it’s way more difficult.

    I don’t think that’s correct. if your browser is something like chrome or edge, there’s no way you could possibly benefit from blending.

    Firefox should not relaying on add ons. Instead, it should be build actual privacy mitigation against tracking and fingerprint.

    the have made actual mitigation by something like RFP, the problem is that they haven’t enabled it by default. and for things like uBlock being an add-on is beneficial, they just need to ship it with firefox itself (like librewolf does), while it’d be cool if some other add-ons get implemented in the browser like HTTPSeverywhere was implemented.

    • @Lunacy@lemmy.mlOP
      2•3 years ago

      the crowd I’m trying to blend in are users who have enabled ressist fingerprinting, and I’m pretty sure anyone enabling RFP would be using at least uBlock and ClearURLs.

      You’re trying to blend in a crowd extremely small thus more easily fingerprintable using an approach that in fact doesn’t work. Users change the settings differently. Some of them could enable RFP but don’t disable WebGL, others could disable WebGL, enable RFP and do not disable JavaScript and so on. The combinations are unlimited because the are so many settings which users can change. This create an enormous fragmentation between users. This is why enable privacy setting by default it’s so important.

      and js is needed for most fingerprinting.

      It’s true, JavaScript prevent a lot of fingerprint. However, Fingerprinting can be done with only CSS and HTML. It’s possibile using CCS to figure out your browser resolution or mouse moviments. Moreover, almost no one disable JavaScript, even between privacy users. So, even with RFP enable , website can still check your real UA. That’s why user agent should the same for every Firefox user by default.

      I don’t think that’s correct. if your browser is something like chrome or edge, there’s no way you could possibly benefit from blending.

      This is a different problem. The fingerprint concern still remains regardless the first-party privacy of the browser you’re going to use.

      like uBlock being an add-on is beneficial, they just need to ship it with firefox itself (like librewolf does), while it’d be cool if some other add-ons get implemented in the browser like HTTPSeverywhere was implemented

      Blocking ads/trackers, blocking third party cookies, use only https and so on is benefical, but browsers need to built these settings in a robust and long term way, instead of using add-ons.

      • soronixa
        1•3 years ago

        I understand the need for privacy respecting default settings, but right now my browser doesn’t have a unique fingerprint, so it kinda works. surely it would be better if mozilla improved firefox, or I used Tor, but for my normal browsing websites don’t really need js, and when it’s turned off my browser isn’t really fingerprintable.

        personally all I’ve done has been following what privacytools.io says, since it’s the most popular one that I know, and hope other have done the same thing so our fingerprints would look the same.

        about the CSS, arkenfox user.js has letterboxing enabled, but I have no idea about mouse movement.

        user agent should the same for every Firefox user by default.

        agreed, I assumed it must be the same for all users who enable RFP, but honestly I don’t know.

        in general I agree, we should pressure Mozilla to make firefox better, but I don’t know how to do that really, I mean they haven’t deleted things like pocket, cloudflare, etc yet so they don’t seem interested in making a better firefox.