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That's effectively how ad-blockers function and they seem to work pretty well. Buying a new domain to bypass the list is pretty easy but adding one line in the
by simias 8y ago
That's effectively how ad-blockers function and they seem to work pretty well.
Buying a new domain to bypass the list is pretty easy but adding one line in the blocklist is even easier (and easily crowdsourced).
- lewiscollard 8y agoThis is a good insight. Because Firefox is open-source, everything can be gamed. If they went for some more "intelligent" method, the kind that instinctively appeals to people like you and I and anyone posting on HN, the fingerprinters could see exactly what they were being tested on, and it would be faster to iterate their counter-measures (keep this particular activity just below threshold X on metric Y) than it would be to make new Firefox releases. And the counter-measures to these more smart kind of measures happen _in secret_, whereas counter-measures to the "bash the problem to death with simple rules" approach are public, are (if their fingerprinting is to have any point) widely distributed, and thus much more immediately picked up and remedied by the many wonderful people who work on the lists used by privacy tools like ad blockers. While we all like a cool and innovative solution, sometimes bashing the problem to death with dumb rules really is the best approach :) (edited for a clarification)