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> making changes like this makes you far, far more fingerprintable, as the vast majority of users don't make changes like this. You're confusing privacy and an
by oil25 7y ago
> making changes like this makes you far, far more fingerprintable, as the vast majority of users don't make changes like this.
You're confusing privacy and anonymity. They can be mutually exclusive.
- fzzzy 7y agoHmm, interesting. Care to explain more?
- oil25 7y agoImproving privacy is reducing the quantity and quality of data collected about you. Making changes to Firefox improves privacy because web sites can collect less data about you. Improving anonymity is reducing the odds that data can uniquely identify you. Making changes to Firefox harms anonymity because very few people deviate from defaults. For example, turning off Javascript prevents a site from knowing much at all except header information like User-Agent. So it can't draw a canvas fingerprint nor measure your screen resolution, but it can still record the fact Javascript was disabled - a rare event. OP is correct: the changes make one 'stick out like a sore thumb'; but incorrect in asserting users are 'more fingerprintable'. Improving privacy may reduce anonymity, but losing anonymity does not necessarily affect privacy.
- kube-system 7y agoLosing anonymity absolutely does affect privacy, that's the entire point to fingerprinting. While anonymity and privacy are theoretically separate concepts, many current techniques used to compromise privacy on the internet are dependent on de-anonymization. None of the data your browser leaks is being used to directly compromise privacy. Your screen resolution, user-agent, canvas fingerprints, etc aren't private information. Their only utility is to support de-anonymization, which in turn allows a compromise in privacy by aggregating your behavior.