6 ms·

I recommend the privacy.resistFingerpriting about:config mentioned. It's been available for a while and does other things too, like changing your user agent.

by meruru 8y ago

chipperyman573 8y ago
Is there any reason this isn't on by default? I don't know exactly how it works, but to my understanding anti fingerprinting tech generally works better when everyone uses it (otherwise you stick out as the "anti fingerprinting" browser)
- shakna 8y ago
  It can decimate useability for the average user. Every time you see a Captcha, you may have to do four or five to be considered "human" because the system struggles to determine who you are.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    > "because the system struggles to determine who you are. " Is the tile fade-in also the system struggling to figure out who you are? No, it's vindictive. Punishment for not browsing the web the way google wants you to.
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      Or maybe it's to make it obvious that a tile has changed...
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        No, sorry but that's nonsense. reCAPTCHAv2 doesn't do the tile fade in unless your v3 score is low. The fade in I'm talking about can take one to five seconds per tile, plainly designed to annoy the user. Here is a video of the fade-in in action: https://youtu.be/zGW7TRtcDeQ?t=89 https://youtu.be/zGW7TRtcDeQ?t=89 (Note that you do not need to be on a shared IP to experience this. Merely using firefox with resist fingerprinting and a adblocker is enough to trigger this behavior on an IP google normally 'trusts' when using chrome.)
        snuxoll 8y ago
        This happens to me all the time at home, I use Safari with uBlock Origin and reCaptcha never fails to decide to fuck with me. I have a static IP address, and Google will happily give me a not-dick captcha if I use another browser without anti-tracking features enabled (even with a clean profile).
        SquareWheel 8y ago
        >Here is a video of the fade-in in action Okay, I agree that's punitive. I've never seen a fade that slow, so it must be at the lowest levels of trust.
        chipperyman573 8y ago
        If you use a VPN (a popular one like PIA or ExpressVPN) you will almost always get a fade in that slow. And it is really annoying.
        stordoff 8y ago
        I submit all the time before realising one has started to change. It's terribly frustrating.
- avip 8y ago
  It'll considerably deteriorate your browsing experience due to various layers of "bot detection" stalking the web.
- DevoidSimo 8y ago
  In addition to what other posters have said I noticed it hides timezone so messaging apps had timestamps which looked wrong because it thought I was somewhere else. Haven't used it in a while though so this may have been changed.
pera 8y ago
I've been using privacy.resistFingerprinting for a while and also recommend it, but there is one major "side effect": your reCAPTCHA score will drop to 0.1 making many websites really tedious to use. It's a price I'm willing to pay though...
- anth_anm 8y ago
  Making recaptcha worthless by making it so intrusive no one will use it. I love this idea. Recaptcha is god awful.
  - meruru 8y ago
    It could work if Firefox had as much marketshare as Chrome...
- meruru 8y ago
  reCAPTCHA is a Google thing so it gets blocked in my browser already anyway (by uMatrix). If I need to load it to see a website, I close the tab immediately and go somewhere else.
  - MagicPropmaker 8y ago
    You need reCAPTCHA to log into HN (or at least I do when I'm working from some parts of the middle east)
    - meruru 8y ago
      I log into HN almost everyday, each time from a different location (Tor) and I've never seen a reCAPTCHA on HN.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      Sounds like you might have been going through some sort of proxy...
    - beatgammit 8y ago
SquareWheel 8y ago
Changing your user agent will do terrible things to captchas. I actually change my user agent specifically to test the fail state of captchas. I'd suggest only turning that on if you know what you're doing.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Which means its working well because captcha is a tracking tool.
  - kabacha 8y ago
    Remember when first iteration of recaptcha was designed for to help digitize books? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-xzwj_p_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-xzwj_p_4 Now it's used for tracking and training proprietary road image recognition for some mega corporation that had a slogan of "do no evil", which is quite hysterical really.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      There is no doubt in my mind that recaptcha data will be used to kill people in the future. Its all very useful for drones.
SunnyS 8y ago
I agree it's wonderful. Helps with fighting trackers
the_pwner224 8y ago
Aside from the downsides mentioned in other comments, this significantly reduces JS timer accuracy which will make games and WebGL laggy and unusable. In about:config if you search for 'resistFingerprinting' there seem to be sub-settings which you can tweak to disable the timer modifications, but even after tweaking them I wasn't able to get performance to be as smooth as when resistFP was completely disabled.

I recommend the privacy.resistFingerpriting about:config mentioned. It's been available for a while and does other things too, like changing your user agent.

by meruru 8y ago

I recommend the privacy.resistFingerpriting about:config mentioned. It's been available for a while and does other things too, like changing your user agent.

chipperyman573 8y ago

Is there any reason this isn't on by default? I don't know exactly how it works, but to my understanding anti fingerprinting tech generally works better when everyone uses it (otherwise you stick out as the "anti fingerprinting" browser)

shakna 8y ago
It can decimate useability for the average user. Every time you see a Captcha, you may have to do four or five to be considered "human" because the system struggles to determine who you are.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  > "because the system struggles to determine who you are. " Is the tile fade-in also the system struggling to figure out who you are? No, it's vindictive. Punishment for not browsing the web the way google wants you to.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Or maybe it's to make it obvious that a tile has changed...
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      No, sorry but that's nonsense. reCAPTCHAv2 doesn't do the tile fade in unless your v3 score is low. The fade in I'm talking about can take one to five seconds per tile, plainly designed to annoy the user. Here is a video of the fade-in in action: https://youtu.be/zGW7TRtcDeQ?t=89 https://youtu.be/zGW7TRtcDeQ?t=89 (Note that you do not need to be on a shared IP to experience this. Merely using firefox with resist fingerprinting and a adblocker is enough to trigger this behavior on an IP google normally 'trusts' when using chrome.)
      - snuxoll 8y ago
        This happens to me all the time at home, I use Safari with uBlock Origin and reCaptcha never fails to decide to fuck with me. I have a static IP address, and Google will happily give me a not-dick captcha if I use another browser without anti-tracking features enabled (even with a clean profile).
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        >Here is a video of the fade-in in action Okay, I agree that's punitive. I've never seen a fade that slow, so it must be at the lowest levels of trust.
        chipperyman573 8y ago
        If you use a VPN (a popular one like PIA or ExpressVPN) you will almost always get a fade in that slow. And it is really annoying.
      - stordoff 8y ago
        I submit all the time before realising one has started to change. It's terribly frustrating.
avip 8y ago
It'll considerably deteriorate your browsing experience due to various layers of "bot detection" stalking the web.
DevoidSimo 8y ago
In addition to what other posters have said I noticed it hides timezone so messaging apps had timestamps which looked wrong because it thought I was somewhere else. Haven't used it in a while though so this may have been changed.

pera 8y ago

I've been using privacy.resistFingerprinting for a while and also recommend it, but there is one major "side effect": your reCAPTCHA score will drop to 0.1 making many websites really tedious to use. It's a price I'm willing to pay though...

anth_anm 8y ago
Making recaptcha worthless by making it so intrusive no one will use it. I love this idea. Recaptcha is god awful.
- meruru 8y ago
  It could work if Firefox had as much marketshare as Chrome...
meruru 8y ago
reCAPTCHA is a Google thing so it gets blocked in my browser already anyway (by uMatrix). If I need to load it to see a website, I close the tab immediately and go somewhere else.
- MagicPropmaker 8y ago
  You need reCAPTCHA to log into HN (or at least I do when I'm working from some parts of the middle east)
  - meruru 8y ago
    I log into HN almost everyday, each time from a different location (Tor) and I've never seen a reCAPTCHA on HN.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    Sounds like you might have been going through some sort of proxy...
  - beatgammit 8y ago

SquareWheel 8y ago

Changing your user agent will do terrible things to captchas. I actually change my user agent specifically to test the fail state of captchas. I'd suggest only turning that on if you know what you're doing.

baroffoos 8y ago
Which means its working well because captcha is a tracking tool.
- kabacha 8y ago
  Remember when first iteration of recaptcha was designed for to help digitize books? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-xzwj_p_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-xzwj_p_4 Now it's used for tracking and training proprietary road image recognition for some mega corporation that had a slogan of "do no evil", which is quite hysterical really.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    There is no doubt in my mind that recaptcha data will be used to kill people in the future. Its all very useful for drones.

SunnyS 8y ago

I agree it's wonderful. Helps with fighting trackers

the_pwner224 8y ago

Aside from the downsides mentioned in other comments, this significantly reduces JS timer accuracy which will make games and WebGL laggy and unusable. In about:config if you search for 'resistFingerprinting' there seem to be sub-settings which you can tweak to disable the timer modifications, but even after tweaking them I wasn't able to get performance to be as smooth as when resistFP was completely disabled.