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Fingerprinting needs the active effort of browser vendors to tackle. Otherwise no amount of blocking will help as it will either identify you more uniquely or c
by Santosh83 7y ago
Fingerprinting needs the active effort of browser vendors to tackle. Otherwise no amount of blocking will help as it will either identify you more uniquely or cripple browsing the web to such an extent that almost no one will opt for it. Browser vendors should implement a resist fingerprint mode where browsers respond with a set of standard, agreed-upon values, or completely random ones for those that can't have a standardised value. This will probably break browsing to some extent but not as much as the 'nuclear', disable Javascript option that everyone suggests whenever this discussion comes up.
But of course most browser vendors don't have an incentive to resist fingerprinting. And if only one vendor does this then the anti-fingerprinting is likely to be less effective, as the pool of browsers is much smaller.
- tln 7y agoChrome is making user-agent non trackable (in some time).. https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent-strings-in-chrome/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent... I think there are actually plenty of examples where the browser vendors are doing this. Google gets so much free tracking from analytics, ads, and OpenID, I don't think they really need to resist privacy oriented browser changes. They might resist some privacy changes, idk, and are probably trailing safari and firefox and brave etc
- Angeo34 7y agoBrave is easier to fingerprint than Internet Explorer
- dorgo 7y agoWouldn't a user script be enough? Just hack all the APIs javascript has access to to return random or default values before the first website script is executed.
- jefftk 7y agoI don't think your user script will apply to IFrames? So all the fingerprinter would have to do is open an iFrame, get a fresh JS environment, and run their code there. (Separately, your proposal would break tons of sites.)
- 0xff00ffee 7y agoWell, Firefox randomizes some of the fields, so of course there are unique hits. Consider Audio/Video codec hashes. Firefox provides a unique number so this website says I"m unique, but I'm unique every time someone asks! This site is kinda misleading, but still very useful.
- account42 7y agoRandom (but plausible) values seem like a much better solution than just default values - you don't just hide as much identifying information as possible but you also poinsin the information that may still be there.