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The same article mentions that you can prevent fingerprinting in Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting = true https://www.bitestring.com/posts/2023-03-19-w

The same article mentions that you can prevent fingerprinting in Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting = true https://www.bitestring.com/posts/2023-03-19-web-fingerprinting-is-worse-than-I-thought.html#:~:text=Firefox%20with-,privacy.resistFingerprinting%20%3D%20true,-Firefox%20has%20a https://www.bitestring.com/posts/2023-03-19-web-fingerprinti... But you are right, it's likely that there are other ways other than cookies and fingerprinting that companies can track you.

jszymborski 4y ago
Resist is a better word than prevent here. Also, there are some major drawbacks, like your browser setting UTC as the default timezone. That one has caused some mix ups when filling out Doodles.
- clairity 4y ago
  this one really annoys me because proton mail uses the "spoofed" utc timezone to show when i sent/received emails, as if i live in the uk or west africa. they also refuse to add timezone as an app setting to correct this issue.
red_trumpet 4y ago
> t's likely that there are other ways other than cookies and fingerprinting that companies can track you. Any idea how they would do that?
- mishu2 4y ago
  Using something like this, which I would personally make illegal: https://fingerprint.com/ https://fingerprint.com/ I also tried setting privacy.resistFingerprinting = true in Firefox, but it's sad to see that most websites become unusable (most sites using canvas just render a green/purple mess), zooming in Google Maps is basically broken (skips several levels at a time), and like others have mentioned dark mode and time zones also stop working. What a mess the (somewhat private) web is nowadays. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced legislating privacy is the only way out of this arms race we seem to be losing. EDIT: Sorry, the parent post already included fingerprinting, missed that. Rant still stands though :)
  - josephd79 4y ago
    Device ID tracking should be illegal period.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    PaleMoon - http://www.palemoon.org/ http://www.palemoon.org/ - a hard fork of Firefox, includes a setting called canvas.poisondata which really messes up browser fingerprinting without distorting any canvas use on a site. It is also a zero telemetry browser and doesn't make any automated connections on startup if the appropriate settings are enabled / disabled (unlike Firefox).
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    Fingerprint.com actually claims[1, FAQ -> GDPR] > we never do cross-domain tracking. Not sure if that is true though... [1] https://fingerprint.com/pricing/ https://fingerprint.com/pricing/
thebrain 4y ago
I tried enabling this recently and I immediately noticed that websites started appearing in light mode instead of copying my system settings and displaying in dark mode. It seems like in it's efforts to make my fingerprint the same as everyone else's Firefox stops telling websites about my display settings. The issue immediately went away when I changed the setting back to privacy.resistFingerprinting = false.
- LikesPwsh 4y ago
  That's intentional. Uncommon settings being exposed to websites makes fingerprinting much more reliable.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  That's how it works. The most common fingerprinting techniques use display settings, e.g. viewport size and this dark mode stuff
- pdonis 4y ago
  Why does the browser need to tell the website about local display settings? In my case, with privacy.resistFingerprinting = true, the Zoom level resets to 100% every time I navigate to another page on a site. Why can't the browser just remember my zoom level locally and re-apply it? Why does it have to tell the website?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    It doesn't have to but if you want websites to follow your system settings for light/dark mode then the browser has to tell the website which one you want at this moment.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      It shouldn't, CSS should contain both modes. You need some checks to ensure JavaScript doesn't leak, but you can place limits on how much you check and avoid having to solve the halting problem.
rascul 4y ago
Enabling this did weird things to web sites. But it didn't seem to help. Before I enabled it, according to https://amiunique.org https://amiunique.org I was unique among the 1646592 fingerprints in their entire dataset. After enabling it, I was unique among the 1646593 fingerprints in their entire dataset.
- galleywest200 4y ago
  Did you clear all cache before retrying?
- usr1106 4y ago
  Is https://amiunique.org https://amiunique.org still going strong? I recently noted that they display some of my browser settings as used by 200.3% of their users. And many other figures over 100%. And they offer positions with a deadline last summer.

jszymborski 4y ago

Resist is a better word than prevent here. Also, there are some major drawbacks, like your browser setting UTC as the default timezone. That one has caused some mix ups when filling out Doodles.

clairity 4y ago
this one really annoys me because proton mail uses the "spoofed" utc timezone to show when i sent/received emails, as if i live in the uk or west africa. they also refuse to add timezone as an app setting to correct this issue.

red_trumpet 4y ago

> t's likely that there are other ways other than cookies and fingerprinting that companies can track you. Any idea how they would do that?

mishu2 4y ago
Using something like this, which I would personally make illegal: https://fingerprint.com/ https://fingerprint.com/ I also tried setting privacy.resistFingerprinting = true in Firefox, but it's sad to see that most websites become unusable (most sites using canvas just render a green/purple mess), zooming in Google Maps is basically broken (skips several levels at a time), and like others have mentioned dark mode and time zones also stop working. What a mess the (somewhat private) web is nowadays. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced legislating privacy is the only way out of this arms race we seem to be losing. EDIT: Sorry, the parent post already included fingerprinting, missed that. Rant still stands though :)
- josephd79 4y ago
  Device ID tracking should be illegal period.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  PaleMoon - http://www.palemoon.org/ http://www.palemoon.org/ - a hard fork of Firefox, includes a setting called canvas.poisondata which really messes up browser fingerprinting without distorting any canvas use on a site. It is also a zero telemetry browser and doesn't make any automated connections on startup if the appropriate settings are enabled / disabled (unlike Firefox).
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  Fingerprint.com actually claims[1, FAQ -> GDPR] > we never do cross-domain tracking. Not sure if that is true though... [1] https://fingerprint.com/pricing/ https://fingerprint.com/pricing/

thebrain 4y ago

I tried enabling this recently and I immediately noticed that websites started appearing in light mode instead of copying my system settings and displaying in dark mode. It seems like in it's efforts to make my fingerprint the same as everyone else's Firefox stops telling websites about my display settings. The issue immediately went away when I changed the setting back to privacy.resistFingerprinting = false.

LikesPwsh 4y ago
That's intentional. Uncommon settings being exposed to websites makes fingerprinting much more reliable.
renewiltord 4y ago
That's how it works. The most common fingerprinting techniques use display settings, e.g. viewport size and this dark mode stuff
pdonis 4y ago
Why does the browser need to tell the website about local display settings? In my case, with privacy.resistFingerprinting = true, the Zoom level resets to 100% every time I navigate to another page on a site. Why can't the browser just remember my zoom level locally and re-apply it? Why does it have to tell the website?
- Spivak 4y ago
  It doesn't have to but if you want websites to follow your system settings for light/dark mode then the browser has to tell the website which one you want at this moment.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    It shouldn't, CSS should contain both modes. You need some checks to ensure JavaScript doesn't leak, but you can place limits on how much you check and avoid having to solve the halting problem.

rascul 4y ago

Enabling this did weird things to web sites. But it didn't seem to help. Before I enabled it, according to https://amiunique.org https://amiunique.org I was unique among the 1646592 fingerprints in their entire dataset. After enabling it, I was unique among the 1646593 fingerprints in their entire dataset.

galleywest200 4y ago
Did you clear all cache before retrying?
usr1106 4y ago
Is https://amiunique.org https://amiunique.org still going strong? I recently noted that they display some of my browser settings as used by 200.3% of their users. And many other figures over 100%. And they offer positions with a deadline last summer.