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Firefox has a pretty neat feature I discovered recently: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers https://wiki.mozilla.org/Secu

Firefox has a pretty neat feature I discovered recently: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec... It lets you run multiple sessions in one window, where each tab belongs to a specific session with separated cookies and such. I've got a bunch of tabs where I'm logged in to Facebook, another set where I'm logged in to Google and the rest of them where I'm not logged in to either. Of course they can still use IP matching to track me, but at least it's something...

brainfire 9y ago
I use the Tor browser for just Facebook. Stymies IP tracking, and I expect it to do more of the right things to deal with fingerprinting too. Plus it's super slow, encouraging me to not spend too much time on Facebook...
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  Why not just quit Facebook?
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    For me, the reason is "Because there are people on Facebook that I want to communicate with".
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      That's true for me, too. But I can communicate with those people via other means and have found no downside to doing so. I've been Facebook- free for years now.
      - zdkl 9y ago
        Preaching to the choir, it's our friends who need convincing!
        kerkeslager 9y ago
        But they don't need convincing for us to leave Facebook. My friends who have Facebook also have text, email, phone, and sometimes WhatsApp, Signal, and/or Telegram. AFAIK I haven't ever convinced anyone to leave Facebook, but that hasn't been a barrier to me leaving Facebook at all.
    - sametmax 9y ago
      I don't know any people around me that have facebook that don't have another way to be reached. So there is something else that makes you stay.
      - godelski 9y ago
        I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I'm in a similar boat. That's just how a lot of people I know communicate. Sure they have other ways to communicate, but they don't want to.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. There's also a non-negligible number that I'm happy interacting with on Facebook but not on anything more personal.
        sametmax 9y ago
        > There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. You can ask said email/sms/whatever. If the communication matters, you should have them anyway. If not, then those persons are not that important. > There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. There you go ! Here is one of the other reasons that I stated before. Not the "those people I can only reach through facebook" bullshit.
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        > If the communication matters, you should have them anyway. If not, then those persons are not that important. Oh, I'd agree they're "not that important" but that doesn't mean "...and therefore I should cut them out of my life." > Not the "those people I can only reach through facebook" bullshit. It's not "bullshit" just because you disagree.
    - 52-6F-62 9y ago
      I stayed for so long for that very reason. My usage went down so much, that the only time I logged on was to briefly look at the news feed (of which I hardly recognized anybody anymore. Just posts by peoples' friends of friends). I decided to just cut it out and hope that I see those people again in real life. If not, then the road goes elsewhere. Feels a little more human.
      - phkahler 9y ago
        >> Just posts by peoples' friends of friends Yeah, I occasionally go through a lot of post and click "don't see any more stuff from MYCATS" or whatever. But it's gotten to the point where you just can't stop it that way either. I think "like" now means "see more crap from here" otherwise how would so many people be viewing so much junk.
  - brainfire 9y ago
    Because it provides a useful service- for the first five or so minutes of a visit anyway.
  - throwaway91111 9y ago
    It's necessary for event planning, at least in my social circles. For everything else, there's email, sms, and a half dozen other social networks.
  - oliv__ 9y ago
    Gosh quitting Facebook has become the new going vegan. Can everyone just mind their own business?
    - castis 9y ago
      If you truly wanted people to mind their own business, getting them off facebook would be a great start.
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      Facebook is the new smoking, where many users complain about how it clearly negatively affects their lives and then when someone suggests quitting as a solution, random other users who weren't involved jump in to tell them to mind their own business.
      - oliv__ 9y ago
        That's a slippery slope and you know it. Are you going to follow everyone who's harming themselves in any way (alcohol, drugs, food, [insert any other vice]...) to chide about their behaviors?
        kerkeslager 9y ago
        I'm not chiding anyone about their behaviors. brainfire was saying how they solve their problems with Facebook, and I suggested an easier solution. Lots of people have problems with Facebook, and I was suggesting a solution to their problems which many people think is untenable, but works well for me. If you don't have problems with Facebook, my comments weren't directed at you. There's some irony in jumping into someone else's conversation to tell them to mind their own business and stop chiding people for their behavior.
  - mintplant 9y ago
    Messenger is the default mode of social organizing among almost all my friends, because everyone has it. I barely ever touch Facebook proper these days.
- decasteve 9y ago
  Do you use facebookcorewwwi.onion? Before I deleted my Facebook account last year that was the only way I connected to it.
  - brainfire 9y ago
    Yes, although I'm not sure if there's any reason to.
- DavideNL 9y ago
  ...in case you want to block all Facebook ip's to prevent any tracking (the method described is for macOS' firewall): https://www.perpetual-beta.org/weblog/blocking-facebook-on-os-x.html https://www.perpetual-beta.org/weblog/blocking-facebook-on-o...
benevol 9y ago
Wouldn't opening several "Private Windows" achieve the same situation? What are the differences?
- hiq 9y ago
  I don't think so: I'm currently logged in on HN. When I open a new private window, I'm logged in as well. This is really annoying when you always use your web browser in private mode, but don't close it regularly. It means that e.g. youtube already builds a profile about me from my previous searches even though I'm not logged in. If I were that concerned I would close Firefox, but the usability issue is just too big for me. Having the best of both worls would be awesome.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > When I open a new private window, I'm logged in as well. Not in firefox, or, at least not for me.
    - hiq 9y ago
      Are you logged in in a private window? I use the setting "Always use private browsing mode" in FF52, so all of my windows are in private mode, but whenever I open a new (private) window, I'm still logged in. I suspect you'd get the same behaviour with the default settings, and opening two new private windows.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        FF53 on Ubuntu, stock settings. And yes, you're right if I log in on either one of two private windows then the other one is also logged in. That's actually a bug in FF afaic.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      It depends on whether all private windows have been closed. If you open a new private window when another is already open, you remain logged into sites. If you close all your private windows and then open another, it's a clean slate. (At least for me.)
chiefalchemist 9y ago
Helpful. But I'm pretty sure their ability to track is more sophisticated than that. Per Chaos Monkeys, and I'm sure its gotten better since.
lucb1e 9y ago
I feel like my Linux user agent is nearly trackable across IP addresses, so few people I know run Linux with Firefox version whatever... but yeah same here: cookies are a non-issue for me. I use a different solution though: self-destructing cookies. Once you closed a tab for more than X seconds (I configured 90 seconds I think), it deletes all cookies (and localstorage etc.) from that domain.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  > and localstorage Just a warning: not if you have enabled multiprocessing. SDC (and other similar addons) can't monitor LocalStorage when e10s is on, only cookies. (Source: "Frequently Asked Questions and Common Problems" at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...)
- sametmax 9y ago
  There are add ons to change the user agent to something more generic. You can even randomize it but it breaks many more sites than I was expecting.
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    If by randomizing you mean random strings (and not from a list), then I think this is relevant: https://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Randomly selected from a pool of known UA.
  - roblabla 9y ago
    I think randomizing the UA might actually be worse, since it would allow services to fingerprint you across calls more precisely. The point is to not ever be different from others. Act like the rest of the crowd. By changing your UA every now and then, you stand out, and become easier to identify.
skocznymroczny 9y ago
Old Opera used to have each tab being a separate environment. For some reason we are mostly back to "private windows" now, which aren't separate at all between each other.
- sametmax 9y ago
  We changed that for a reason. No use wants to be logged out that often. Actually most facebook user probably enter their password one time a month. Less if they use the mobile.
  - _jal 9y ago
    Wish it were still an option; I use quite a bit of RAM on multiple instances of browsers for this very reason.
    - cpeterso 9y ago
      Firefox is integrating a cookie feature from Tor called first-party isolation or double-key cookies. It will separate third-party cookies for each first-party site. If a.com and b.com both load images from evilcorp.com, Firefox will send evilcorp.com different cookies for requests from a.com and b.com. Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources, but first-party isolation should allow each site to work without cookie "crosstalk". You can test first-party isolation now by flipping the about:config pref "privacy.firstparty.isolate" to true. Beware that there are still bugs that break some sites, which is why the feature is not enabled by default yet. If you find bugs, please report them in Bugzilla! Here is the Firefox bug tracking the integration and known bugs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996
      - _jal 9y ago
        Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about that. I'll play with that this weekend. (Definitely not afraid of breaking sites; that's how I learn what they're up to.)
sametmax 9y ago
Really love this feature. Incredibly useful for sticky accounts such as google, facebook, twitter, etc. Buttons and scripts follow you everywhere these days. But it's not just that. It let you easily open several accounts in parallel. I have 3 github accounts, and can open 3 tabs in 3 clicks with the 3 account in parallel. Before than I had to use profiles and it was a pain.
Ankaios 9y ago
I've been tempted to write something that goes a bit further. I'd like traffic to each site to be routed through proxies with different IP addresses. (Perhaps even to the point where my devices are automatically managing a set of nodes or Lambdas on AWS.) Along with that, it will still be necessary to fix some browser information leaks that could be used for fingerprinting If someone is tempted to beat me to it, go for it!
- y4mi 9y ago
  Thats going to break so many websites for you ... Pretty much any service that uses server side sessions across domains. Downloads are often whitelisted to a session, which get invalidated on ip changes.
  - Ankaios 9y ago
    For exactly those sorts of reasons, I don't expect to apply such a system universally any time soon. In practice I suspect it will only make sense to employ it with a modest number of problematic domains. Currently I use uBlock with javascript defaulting to disabled, manage cookies and local storage, disable referrer headers, etc., but there are still some huge privacy leaks. On the other hand, it might be possible to devise a solution that works generally but employs white lists or other exceptions for sites that need certain IP-address behavior. That would take a fair amount of effort, but the approach has worked well in similar contexts, such as ad blockers.
- khc 9y ago
  Did you just described tor?
andrewaylett 9y ago
Privacy Badger is also good for things like this: you can be logged into Facebook, but Privacy Badger will block requests to Facebook from third-party sites. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
- civilitty 9y ago
  Privacy Badger is great and goes way beyond other anti-tracking and ad blockers. They also keep an eye on a lot of the CDNs to make sure they're not running sneaky stuff like canvas finger-printing or using local storage to bypass various protections.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    I just wish Privacy Badger didn't force DNT to be enabled. Not only does the entire concept mean trusting the advertising companies implicitly, the header serves to differentiate your traffic.
    - dmix 9y ago
      You're worried about browser fingerprinting? Does any Firefox extension effectively counter that? From my understanding blocking 3rd party JS is largely insufficient for accomplishing this, regardless of DNT settings. You may be right regardless that it's better to appear as much like a stock browser as possible, in terms of privacy settings, so DNT should stay disabled. But in practical terms it might not make of a difference.
      - problems 9y ago
        Simple blockers actually do a lot of good here - because many of the things that will fingerprint you are not first party sites but 3rd party ad scripts.
      - totalperspectiv 9y ago
        I don't know of any tools to block fingerprinting, but here's a cool tool by the EFF for testing how unique your browser is: https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org
arthurfm 9y ago
The container tabs feature can also be enabled through the Firefox Test Pilot website (which has lots of other cool experimental features too). https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/
mahyarm 9y ago
I do something similar with chrome users. I like it better because each 'user' is a separate window and I can color scheme which one i'm in with browser themes. The setup takes a while initially although. Having multiple container tabs on the same window can be hard to manage & track, at least with the way brave presented it with their numbered session tabs.
dantiberian 9y ago
The new versions of Safari in iOS 11 and High Sierra have a similar feature by default to prevent tracking. First party cookies work, but third-party cookies are put in a virtual container, so tracking networks that are on NYT and Washington Post can't correlate the cookie. It's a bit more complicated than that in practice, but that's the idea.
btown 9y ago
Chrome has profiles for this as well. You can also use the PrivateInternetAccess addon which proxies all traffic for that profile alone, and a canvas blocker, in a dedicated Chrome profile. Font fingerprinting is still possible, but beyond that there is no way to associate that profile with anything else.
- simooooo 9y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Screen resolution, Machine time, flash version, fonts. Plus several others I forget
ozi 9y ago
They can also use screen resolution, fonts you have loaded, plugin versions, canvas serial number, your gpu, and a whole lot of other cross browser things.

brainfire 9y ago

I use the Tor browser for just Facebook. Stymies IP tracking, and I expect it to do more of the right things to deal with fingerprinting too. Plus it's super slow, encouraging me to not spend too much time on Facebook...

kerkeslager 9y ago
Why not just quit Facebook?
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  For me, the reason is "Because there are people on Facebook that I want to communicate with".
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    That's true for me, too. But I can communicate with those people via other means and have found no downside to doing so. I've been Facebook- free for years now.
    - zdkl 9y ago
      Preaching to the choir, it's our friends who need convincing!
      - kerkeslager 9y ago
        But they don't need convincing for us to leave Facebook. My friends who have Facebook also have text, email, phone, and sometimes WhatsApp, Signal, and/or Telegram. AFAIK I haven't ever convinced anyone to leave Facebook, but that hasn't been a barrier to me leaving Facebook at all.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    I don't know any people around me that have facebook that don't have another way to be reached. So there is something else that makes you stay.
    - godelski 9y ago
      I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I'm in a similar boat. That's just how a lot of people I know communicate. Sure they have other ways to communicate, but they don't want to.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. There's also a non-negligible number that I'm happy interacting with on Facebook but not on anything more personal.
      - sametmax 9y ago
        > There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. You can ask said email/sms/whatever. If the communication matters, you should have them anyway. If not, then those persons are not that important. > There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. There you go ! Here is one of the other reasons that I stated before. Not the "those people I can only reach through facebook" bullshit.
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        > If the communication matters, you should have them anyway. If not, then those persons are not that important. Oh, I'd agree they're "not that important" but that doesn't mean "...and therefore I should cut them out of my life." > Not the "those people I can only reach through facebook" bullshit. It's not "bullshit" just because you disagree.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    I stayed for so long for that very reason. My usage went down so much, that the only time I logged on was to briefly look at the news feed (of which I hardly recognized anybody anymore. Just posts by peoples' friends of friends). I decided to just cut it out and hope that I see those people again in real life. If not, then the road goes elsewhere. Feels a little more human.
    - phkahler 9y ago
      >> Just posts by peoples' friends of friends Yeah, I occasionally go through a lot of post and click "don't see any more stuff from MYCATS" or whatever. But it's gotten to the point where you just can't stop it that way either. I think "like" now means "see more crap from here" otherwise how would so many people be viewing so much junk.
- brainfire 9y ago
  Because it provides a useful service- for the first five or so minutes of a visit anyway.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  It's necessary for event planning, at least in my social circles. For everything else, there's email, sms, and a half dozen other social networks.
- oliv__ 9y ago
  Gosh quitting Facebook has become the new going vegan. Can everyone just mind their own business?
  - castis 9y ago
    If you truly wanted people to mind their own business, getting them off facebook would be a great start.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    Facebook is the new smoking, where many users complain about how it clearly negatively affects their lives and then when someone suggests quitting as a solution, random other users who weren't involved jump in to tell them to mind their own business.
    - oliv__ 9y ago
      That's a slippery slope and you know it. Are you going to follow everyone who's harming themselves in any way (alcohol, drugs, food, [insert any other vice]...) to chide about their behaviors?
      - kerkeslager 9y ago
        I'm not chiding anyone about their behaviors. brainfire was saying how they solve their problems with Facebook, and I suggested an easier solution. Lots of people have problems with Facebook, and I was suggesting a solution to their problems which many people think is untenable, but works well for me. If you don't have problems with Facebook, my comments weren't directed at you. There's some irony in jumping into someone else's conversation to tell them to mind their own business and stop chiding people for their behavior.
- mintplant 9y ago
  Messenger is the default mode of social organizing among almost all my friends, because everyone has it. I barely ever touch Facebook proper these days.
decasteve 9y ago
Do you use facebookcorewwwi.onion? Before I deleted my Facebook account last year that was the only way I connected to it.
- brainfire 9y ago
  Yes, although I'm not sure if there's any reason to.
DavideNL 9y ago
...in case you want to block all Facebook ip's to prevent any tracking (the method described is for macOS' firewall): https://www.perpetual-beta.org/weblog/blocking-facebook-on-os-x.html https://www.perpetual-beta.org/weblog/blocking-facebook-on-o...

benevol 9y ago

Wouldn't opening several "Private Windows" achieve the same situation? What are the differences?

hiq 9y ago
I don't think so: I'm currently logged in on HN. When I open a new private window, I'm logged in as well. This is really annoying when you always use your web browser in private mode, but don't close it regularly. It means that e.g. youtube already builds a profile about me from my previous searches even though I'm not logged in. If I were that concerned I would close Firefox, but the usability issue is just too big for me. Having the best of both worls would be awesome.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > When I open a new private window, I'm logged in as well. Not in firefox, or, at least not for me.
  - hiq 9y ago
    Are you logged in in a private window? I use the setting "Always use private browsing mode" in FF52, so all of my windows are in private mode, but whenever I open a new (private) window, I'm still logged in. I suspect you'd get the same behaviour with the default settings, and opening two new private windows.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      FF53 on Ubuntu, stock settings. And yes, you're right if I log in on either one of two private windows then the other one is also logged in. That's actually a bug in FF afaic.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    It depends on whether all private windows have been closed. If you open a new private window when another is already open, you remain logged into sites. If you close all your private windows and then open another, it's a clean slate. (At least for me.)

chiefalchemist 9y ago

Helpful. But I'm pretty sure their ability to track is more sophisticated than that. Per Chaos Monkeys, and I'm sure its gotten better since.

lucb1e 9y ago

I feel like my Linux user agent is nearly trackable across IP addresses, so few people I know run Linux with Firefox version whatever... but yeah same here: cookies are a non-issue for me. I use a different solution though: self-destructing cookies. Once you closed a tab for more than X seconds (I configured 90 seconds I think), it deletes all cookies (and localstorage etc.) from that domain.

drdaeman 9y ago
> and localstorage Just a warning: not if you have enabled multiprocessing. SDC (and other similar addons) can't monitor LocalStorage when e10s is on, only cookies. (Source: "Frequently Asked Questions and Common Problems" at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...)
sametmax 9y ago
There are add ons to change the user agent to something more generic. You can even randomize it but it breaks many more sites than I was expecting.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  If by randomizing you mean random strings (and not from a list), then I think this is relevant: https://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Randomly selected from a pool of known UA.
- roblabla 9y ago
  I think randomizing the UA might actually be worse, since it would allow services to fingerprint you across calls more precisely. The point is to not ever be different from others. Act like the rest of the crowd. By changing your UA every now and then, you stand out, and become easier to identify.

skocznymroczny 9y ago

Old Opera used to have each tab being a separate environment. For some reason we are mostly back to "private windows" now, which aren't separate at all between each other.

sametmax 9y ago
We changed that for a reason. No use wants to be logged out that often. Actually most facebook user probably enter their password one time a month. Less if they use the mobile.
- _jal 9y ago
  Wish it were still an option; I use quite a bit of RAM on multiple instances of browsers for this very reason.
  - cpeterso 9y ago
    Firefox is integrating a cookie feature from Tor called first-party isolation or double-key cookies. It will separate third-party cookies for each first-party site. If a.com and b.com both load images from evilcorp.com, Firefox will send evilcorp.com different cookies for requests from a.com and b.com. Blocking third-party cookies can break some site that rely on third-party resources, but first-party isolation should allow each site to work without cookie "crosstalk". You can test first-party isolation now by flipping the about:config pref "privacy.firstparty.isolate" to true. Beware that there are still bugs that break some sites, which is why the feature is not enabled by default yet. If you find bugs, please report them in Bugzilla! Here is the Firefox bug tracking the integration and known bugs: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1299996
    - _jal 9y ago
      Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about that. I'll play with that this weekend. (Definitely not afraid of breaking sites; that's how I learn what they're up to.)

sametmax 9y ago

Really love this feature. Incredibly useful for sticky accounts such as google, facebook, twitter, etc. Buttons and scripts follow you everywhere these days. But it's not just that. It let you easily open several accounts in parallel. I have 3 github accounts, and can open 3 tabs in 3 clicks with the 3 account in parallel. Before than I had to use profiles and it was a pain.

Ankaios 9y ago

I've been tempted to write something that goes a bit further. I'd like traffic to each site to be routed through proxies with different IP addresses. (Perhaps even to the point where my devices are automatically managing a set of nodes or Lambdas on AWS.) Along with that, it will still be necessary to fix some browser information leaks that could be used for fingerprinting If someone is tempted to beat me to it, go for it!

y4mi 9y ago
Thats going to break so many websites for you ... Pretty much any service that uses server side sessions across domains. Downloads are often whitelisted to a session, which get invalidated on ip changes.
- Ankaios 9y ago
  For exactly those sorts of reasons, I don't expect to apply such a system universally any time soon. In practice I suspect it will only make sense to employ it with a modest number of problematic domains. Currently I use uBlock with javascript defaulting to disabled, manage cookies and local storage, disable referrer headers, etc., but there are still some huge privacy leaks. On the other hand, it might be possible to devise a solution that works generally but employs white lists or other exceptions for sites that need certain IP-address behavior. That would take a fair amount of effort, but the approach has worked well in similar contexts, such as ad blockers.
khc 9y ago
Did you just described tor?

andrewaylett 9y ago

Privacy Badger is also good for things like this: you can be logged into Facebook, but Privacy Badger will block requests to Facebook from third-party sites. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

civilitty 9y ago
Privacy Badger is great and goes way beyond other anti-tracking and ad blockers. They also keep an eye on a lot of the CDNs to make sure they're not running sneaky stuff like canvas finger-printing or using local storage to bypass various protections.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  I just wish Privacy Badger didn't force DNT to be enabled. Not only does the entire concept mean trusting the advertising companies implicitly, the header serves to differentiate your traffic.
  - dmix 9y ago
    You're worried about browser fingerprinting? Does any Firefox extension effectively counter that? From my understanding blocking 3rd party JS is largely insufficient for accomplishing this, regardless of DNT settings. You may be right regardless that it's better to appear as much like a stock browser as possible, in terms of privacy settings, so DNT should stay disabled. But in practical terms it might not make of a difference.
    - problems 9y ago
      Simple blockers actually do a lot of good here - because many of the things that will fingerprint you are not first party sites but 3rd party ad scripts.
    - totalperspectiv 9y ago
      I don't know of any tools to block fingerprinting, but here's a cool tool by the EFF for testing how unique your browser is: https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org

arthurfm 9y ago

The container tabs feature can also be enabled through the Firefox Test Pilot website (which has lots of other cool experimental features too). https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers https://testpilot.firefox.com/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/

mahyarm 9y ago

I do something similar with chrome users. I like it better because each 'user' is a separate window and I can color scheme which one i'm in with browser themes. The setup takes a while initially although. Having multiple container tabs on the same window can be hard to manage & track, at least with the way brave presented it with their numbered session tabs.

dantiberian 9y ago

The new versions of Safari in iOS 11 and High Sierra have a similar feature by default to prevent tracking. First party cookies work, but third-party cookies are put in a virtual container, so tracking networks that are on NYT and Washington Post can't correlate the cookie. It's a bit more complicated than that in practice, but that's the idea.

btown 9y ago

Chrome has profiles for this as well. You can also use the PrivateInternetAccess addon which proxies all traffic for that profile alone, and a canvas blocker, in a dedicated Chrome profile. Font fingerprinting is still possible, but beyond that there is no way to associate that profile with anything else.

simooooo 9y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Screen resolution, Machine time, flash version, fonts. Plus several others I forget

ozi 9y ago

They can also use screen resolution, fonts you have loaded, plugin versions, canvas serial number, your gpu, and a whole lot of other cross browser things.