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Great idea! Targeted advertising is really upsetting. If we take it one step further: 1. Find out the top non-unique fingerprint [of the year.] 2. Create a F

Great idea! Targeted advertising is really upsetting. If we take it one step further: 1. Find out the top non-unique fingerprint [of the year.] 2. Create a Firefox add-on (or modify Firefox source if an add-on is not powerful enough), which uses the most non-unique fingerprint [this year.] 3. Targeted advertising ends for those who use the plug-in/add-on. It's a cat and mouse game as fingerprint parameters keep increasing, but I think it's possible to win this one.

MivLives 7y ago
The problem with this is the less unique you are, the more you start looking like a bot. The more you look like a bot the more times you have to do things to prove you aren't, like captchas
- WWLink 7y ago
  If everyone looks like a bot, then nobody's a bot, and they can go fuck off.
- anidea01 7y ago
  True. But I only care about filling captchas on say banking websites, which is approximately happens once a month. The rest, I just close the tab: the content never worth it. The most obnoxious ads don't care about captchas, they just blast you with ads from your previous search keywords/browsing history. p.s. Would the amount of captchas reduce if we take not the top most non-unique fingerprint, but say "slightly below average"? It will be still severely non-unique for ads purposes.
- twelvechairs 7y ago
  This is Google's strategy to defeat privacy in a nutshell
  - TTPrograms 7y ago
    A better solution would be to scramble parts of this fingerprint for each domain.
    - 91aintprime 7y ago
      especially if it was additive: Add fake extras to the content encoding, permissions, audio formats etc. Although that doesn't fix everything
- wizardforhire 7y ago
  a small price to pay for anonymity
clarry 7y ago
> It's a cat and mouse game as fingerprint parameters keep increasing, but I think it's possible to win this one. I don't think it's possible to win this one without dramatic changes to the web (e.g. abandon JS). Panopticlick was started 10 years ago, fingerprinting was pretty well known about back then, and though browser vendors have started adding defenses, it has evidently done nothing as the amount of data you can gather via scripts keeps only increasing and blocking some vectors would break some sites. The situation was dire 10 years ago, it hasn't gotten better, it's not getting better. If anything it's now just worse because of so many idiots writing sites that don't really work at all with JS disabled. The most practical approach I can think of that you could employ right now is to move browsers to run on headless servers (instead of the user's computer) and let them stream the rendered page to your client. It's still got plenty of issues, and javascript is making it hard to do it right and have a good UX. Fuck javascript and everyone who uses it without degrading gracefully.

MivLives 7y ago

The problem with this is the less unique you are, the more you start looking like a bot. The more you look like a bot the more times you have to do things to prove you aren't, like captchas

WWLink 7y ago
If everyone looks like a bot, then nobody's a bot, and they can go fuck off.
anidea01 7y ago
True. But I only care about filling captchas on say banking websites, which is approximately happens once a month. The rest, I just close the tab: the content never worth it. The most obnoxious ads don't care about captchas, they just blast you with ads from your previous search keywords/browsing history. p.s. Would the amount of captchas reduce if we take not the top most non-unique fingerprint, but say "slightly below average"? It will be still severely non-unique for ads purposes.
twelvechairs 7y ago
This is Google's strategy to defeat privacy in a nutshell
- TTPrograms 7y ago
  A better solution would be to scramble parts of this fingerprint for each domain.
  - 91aintprime 7y ago
    especially if it was additive: Add fake extras to the content encoding, permissions, audio formats etc. Although that doesn't fix everything
wizardforhire 7y ago
a small price to pay for anonymity

clarry 7y ago

> It's a cat and mouse game as fingerprint parameters keep increasing, but I think it's possible to win this one. I don't think it's possible to win this one without dramatic changes to the web (e.g. abandon JS). Panopticlick was started 10 years ago, fingerprinting was pretty well known about back then, and though browser vendors have started adding defenses, it has evidently done nothing as the amount of data you can gather via scripts keeps only increasing and blocking some vectors would break some sites. The situation was dire 10 years ago, it hasn't gotten better, it's not getting better. If anything it's now just worse because of so many idiots writing sites that don't really work at all with JS disabled. The most practical approach I can think of that you could employ right now is to move browsers to run on headless servers (instead of the user's computer) and let them stream the rendered page to your client. It's still got plenty of issues, and javascript is making it hard to do it right and have a good UX. Fuck javascript and everyone who uses it without degrading gracefully.