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My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"
by typon 6y ago
My friend who works in an adtech company:
"Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"
- stiray 6y agoProtip #2, for what cant be traced using conventional methods, they will use fingerprinting and those add-ons take care about most common methods of fingerprinting - canvas, webgl, fonts and audio: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvas-fingerprint-defender https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvas-finger... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webgl-fingerprint-defender https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webgl-fingerp... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-fingerprint-defender https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-fingerpr... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/audioctx-fingerprint-defender https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/audioctx-fing... I would really love to have more addins like this, doing one thing and doing it good. They will kill fingerprinting and as a proof, I was downvoted the next moment i posted the links in another post but I want you to know there is a way out.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xvector 6y agoFirefox already includes many of these, some of those plugins are redundant or unnecessary.
- danShumway 6y ago> already includes many of these Make sure you turn them on though! Firefox by default doesn't block canvas fingerprinting, that's a setting you need to enable in `about:config` under the `privacy.resistFingerprinting` section.
- maltalex 6y agoWhy aren't they on by default? What's the downside?
- pietroglyph 6y agoGoogle bullies you with Captchas if you have `privacy.resistFingerprinting` on.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoOne solution for this, at least for search, would be to use something like https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
- Shared404 6y agoI've also found DDG to be more then adequate for search. The issue I had more often is random captcha's for sites I actually need to use not letting me through. (Thanks school). My solution for this is to keep de-googled Chromium installed, and just use it when I run across these sites.
- Zenbit_UX 6y agoI've used DDG for about a year straight now, it's adequate but I find myself needing a !g at least once a day. Searching DDG for error messages & recent events from the news tab are really lagging behind what Google provides unfortunately.
- BuckRogers 6y agoI use !sp if I want to see Google results. I only use it two or three times a year for critical searches that I want more than one result set for but it may suit your needs. Google News is pretty good but I prefer Inoreader anyway, !ddgn is usually good enough for me, for specific news searches.
- PhantomGremlin 6y agoProtip #3: when all else fails, they will use your IP address to target you. E.g. I usually use Firefox with NoScript. I frequently exit Firefox; when I do I clear everything using "Clear history when Firefox closes". When I want to visit a site that requires JavaScript I switch to Safari. I'm just as aggressive in Safari in clearing my history. Consequently, about the only ads I do see (in Safari) are clothing ads for teenage girls. I have two teenage girls, they have their own computers, so it must be the shared IP address. So far it hasn't been worth the hassle for me to switch to a new IP address from Comcast more than about once a year. By default my firewall asks for the same IP address and even if it didn't, Comcast will use my firewall's MAC address to give me the same IP address.
- bradly 6y agoProtip #4: I use Forget Me Now to whitelist sites I want to save cookies for after closing tabs. You'd be surprised how few websites you actually need to save cookies for. I thought it would be way more hassle than it ended up being.
- smichel17 6y agoYeah. I use Temporary Containers to do the same (with permanent containers as my whitelist). I also have 3rd party cookies blocked entirely. Recently I also set uMatrix to block 1st party cookies. Yes, I need to re-enable them relatively often, but I've been surprised at how often I simply don't need them.
- asddubs 6y agoi use cookie autodelete, and i think i have two sites whitelisted
- surround 6y agoWhile these addons may help against help prevent some fingerprinting attempts, they do not adequately reduce the fingerprint to be non-unique. They certainly won’t hurt, though (many websites just take a hash of the canvas). It’s very difficult to have a non-unique fingerprint. Your browser would have to be the exactly the same as a bunch of other people. At the moment (AFAIK), this is only possible with Tor (all Tor users have the same browser fingerprint.) You don’t have to worry about this too much, though. Firefox and uBlock Origin blacklist many fingerprinting scripts.
- corford 6y agoThis is a handy site to get a feel for how unique you are: https://amiunique.org/fp https://amiunique.org/fp Some other useful ones for seeing what you're leaking: https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.deviceinfo.me https://www.deviceinfo.me http://fp.virpo.sk/ http://fp.virpo.sk/
- OrwellianChild 6y agoI wish this was helpful, but amiunique.org calls out the values for canvas, fonts, etc. as unique when running the blockers. Maybe this is because it's randomizing every time, but it makes the amiunique test pretty flawed...
- corford 6y agoamiunique.org is just a database of fingerprints (size of which is governed by however much traffic they get). If you're showing up as unique it's either because: 1. your blockers are randomising each time 2. your blockers aren't blocking everything and what's left is still enough to uniquely fingerprint you against the database of fingerprints they have. If it's 1 above, that's fine. If it's 2, you may need more (or better) blockers. Also, it obviously helps from the get go if you're on a bog standard platform like Windows and using FF.
- surround 6y ago
- lebaux 6y agoI'm using vivaldi, and it seems that https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dont-fingerprint-me/nhbedikkbkakbjipijipejfojanppbfg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dont-fingerprint-m... extension is able to block most of the fingerprinting attempts. If you guys know about better "plug-in" solution, please let me know. I don't want to sacrifice basic comfort of browsing though, like disabling .js, wiping everything on browser restart or diddling with uMatrix on every website.
- DavideNL 6y agoThe way I read their product description the extension does not block anything at all. It only detects fingerprinting? "Dont FingerPrint Me (DFPM) is a browser devtools extension for detecting browser fingerprinting."
- smichel17 6y agoI made a nicely written comment, then accidentally deleted it, so here's the super pithy version with examples omitted, since I don't want to retype on my phone. I use uMatrix with strict defaults for privacy. I agree diddling is annoying. I find diddling with sites more annoying.
- asddubs 6y agoit does make you appreciate it a lot more when someone has their shit together, if the site works with noscript and doesn't pull in scripts from 20 different hosts
- smichel17 6y agoI was super impressed with https://shop.balance.com/ https://shop.balance.com/ recently (actually the site is run by worldpantry.com) — I made it though the entire checkout flow with no js and no third party resources. An e-commerce site!! They're normally the absolute worst.
- rumpels 6y ago"They will kill fingerprinting and as a proof, " No they don't. But they help a little. Here are some of mine in my privacy browser: BP Privacy Block all Font and Glyph Detection Canvas Blocker Clear URLS Cockiebro Decentraleyes I don't care about cockies NoScrupt Privacy Settings Privacy Oriented Origin Policy Startpage ublock origin WebTRC Control HTTPS Everywhere And as a bonus, not really related: Bypass Paywalls Clean Also use a host file manager. I use host flash Most important thing: use many many browser. I have chrome for Facebook, Banking sites and Booking travel tickets (Trust me, you don't wat to do this with you privacy broswer). I have chromium for gmail I use firefox with all the plug-ins for webbrowsing opera with build in VPN for some other stuff (carefull, owned by Chinese) Vivaldi There is also blue moon. There are many browser out there. Another option would be to use virtual machines with seperate VPNs.
- nnt38 6y ago> in my privacy browser Why are you reinventing the Tor browser?
- suby 6y agoThere's a tacit understanding there that their collection and use of data is wrong, or at least that it is against one's interest to have their data collected.
- formerly_proven 6y agoEven less data if you use uBlock Origin and possibly uMatrix (which is very high maintenance, but also reveals the utter insanity of the web). Without an adblocker the internet is such a slow heap of trash that I'd never go back to not using one. This is also one of the main reasons I use my iPhone so little, since it doesn't really have any way to adblock.
- markn951 6y ago????????? https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr/id1030595027 Or like, any similar app. There's hundreds of them.
- nitrogen 6y agoThe only downside is that product managers who rely on third-party analytics to decide what platforms are relevant will never see Firefox+uBlock users as relevant. I've had to argue this at multiple companies; fortunately at some places multiple developers used uBlock so it wasn't as hard as making the case alone.
- godelski 6y ago> fortunately at some places multiple developers used uBlock so it wasn't as hard as making the case alone. Is adblocking not common? Every tech literate person I know uses an ad blocker. I'd say about 30-40% of millennials I know use them, most using ADB or uBlock Origin. Every time I see someone using a browser with ads I forget what a nightmare the internet is.
- cpeterso 6y agoThese sites claim the percentage of US web users using an ad blocker was 25% in 2016 and 27% in 2017: https://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-all-internet-users-will-ad-block-by-2018-2017-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-all-internet-users-wil... https://www.statista.com/topics/3201/ad-blocking/ https://www.statista.com/topics/3201/ad-blocking/
- 6y ago
- winter_blue 6y agoI've gone back and forth between Firefox and Chrome. It's just that Firefox is noticeably slower than Chrome (or at least was about a year ago). Even simply switching between open tabs around what feels like 0.5 seconds, whereas on Chrome, tab switching is instantaneous. I've run Firefox in multi-process mode (since that was an option), but even with it, in general it seems like Firefox gets noticeably slower than Chrome when you have a lot of open tabs. I've always preferred and wanted to use Firefox over Chrome, but the performance degradation was too much to bear.
- m12k 6y agoAre you on macOS? I held off on switching until a rendering optimization landed a bit less than a year ago, which brought Firefox up to par with Chrome.
- kiwijamo 6y agoI only have 8GB, and its also instant for me. Performance is generally very good across the board. Only trouble I have is with certain Google properties... I do wonder why...!
- jdashg 6y agoHi! We at Mozilla certainly don't see that! I'm at 815 tabs in this window alone and switching is instantaneous. Did you happen to file a bug report about this atypical behavior?
- criddell 6y agoFWIW, Firefox is slower for me on certain pages. I keep Chrome installed for things like Google Docs. For example, in the word processor, it tries to save the document every few keystrokes and Firefox will hang for 5-10 seconds whereas on Chrome it's so fast it isn't noticeable.
- Jonnax 6y agoWell we know that Google would put elements on YouTube to prevent Edge from using hardware acceleration. So there might be a factor there. But perhaps it could be an add-on. I discovered that Lastpass injection feature to autofilled had a performance impact. Switched to Bitwarden and it was noticibly faster.
- rladd 6y agoLatest Firefox still doesn't protect against browser fingerprinting. This from the EFF Panopticlick: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 303,579 tested in the past 45 days. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.21 bits of identifying information.
- danShumway 6y agoTwo things: 1. Blocking redirect tracking is about more than just fingerprinting users. I'm a huge fan of Panopticlick's work here, but it's not a be-all end-all measure of whether a browser is getting more or less private. There are a lot of different, complicated things we're talking about when we bring up browser privacy. 2. Disable Javascript with something like uMatrix by default, and that number will drop dramatically. By default with JS disabled, I think my Firefox leaks about 8 bits of information, which Panopticlick lists as sufficient protection. Major caveat in that non-JS users are likely disproportionately represented at Panopticlick, and people shouldn't use Panopticlick as more than an indicator of what's possible. In the real world, disabling Javascript will leak more bits since fewer other users will be doing it. However, it's still likely worth doing if you can tolerate the inconvenience. And of course, the more people that block JS by default, the better protection it provides.
- rladd 6y agoJavascript is used by such a large percentage of sites that having it disabled is not a viable option for most people. The point of these by-default protections is that they are supposed to work for most people. Suggesting that someone techie can do extra stuff that most people won't do is not really germane to the conversation.
- danShumway 6y ago> is not a viable option for most people. Of course this depends on what sites you frequent, but you'd probably be surprised. I disable Javascript by default, I'd say 70-80% of the sites I visit load. An even larger percentage load with only 1st-party Javascript enabled. I do think excessive required Javascript on the web is a problem, but I also think Hackernews overstates this problem sometimes, to the point where people think it's literally impossible to browse the web without Javascript. I don't think that characterization is helpful, a lot of us browse the web every day without Javascript running by default. Most news sites are fine, high-end publications like the NYT actually tend to be pretty good at progressive enhancement. Lower-quality engineered sites like Kotaku won't load images, but the articles are still completely readable. And to be clear, permanently enabling Javascript for a specific site in UMatrix only takes 2 mouse clicks. > Suggesting that someone techie can do extra stuff that most people won't do is not really germane to the conversation. I suspect at least 50% of Hackernews readers are smart enough to disable Javascript and selectively enable it when a site breaks. It's germane to the conversation in that those people might want an effective way to mitigate tracking. I don't have to restrict myself to the lowest common denominator of features when I'm choosing a browser, and I don't think other users should need to either. Of course raising the lowest common denominator is important, but if you really care about your own security and privacy, at some point you have to make technical decisions that go beyond that. I think it's relevant to the conversation to point out in a technical forum that those options exist for people who need them and can use them.
- luxuryballs 6y agoI assume the same applies for Edge so if I want my ads to be a tailored as possible but don’t want to use Google apps then use the most recent Edge browser since it’s Chromium under the hood?
- addicted44 6y agoCouldn't that also be because Firefox has a higher percentage of expert users than Chrome, which has pretty much become the default browser, would.