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You can get better fingerprints from WebGL because it provides information about your video card. Within a year I think I saw the site that really needed WebGL
by codedokode 7y ago
You can get better fingerprints from WebGL because it provides information about your video card. Within a year I think I saw the site that really needed WebGL only once. It is almost useless feature that is suited only for fingerprinting. You better go to your Firefox settings and disable it right now to prevent tracking.
To prevent tracking using Canvas it would be good if there was a single drawing library for all browsers or at least they used only internal code and didn't rely on OS or hardware acceleration.
Regarding Audio API, it also would be nice if it provided less details about audio hardware or OS audio stack.
- pmiller2 7y agoDisabling WebGL just gives the fingerprinting code a different data point to fingerprint you with, kind of like “do not track.” I’m not convinced it would make any difference.
- saagarjha 7y agoTurning off WebGL is one bit of entropy, though, while allowing access to the canvas may allow much more.
- pmiller2 7y agoNot necessarily. Because disabling WebGL is probably relatively rare, while the API itself is fairly ubiquitous, that one bit probably has a high surprisal value, so it carries more information than it would seem to.
- cinquemb 7y agoYeah, much better to spoof readouts to Canvas, Audio, etc. And this would only be on sites that one would even consider allowing JS to run.
- XCSme 7y ago"It is almost useless feature that is suited only for fingerprinting." And games.
- greggman2 7y agoAnd Google Maps
- cromwellian 7y agoAnd machine learning.
- codedokode 7y agoTo develop better fingerprinting methods.