We talk about browser fingerprinting a lot without providing a lot of background information on what it actually is outside of brief overviews on our Firefox Privacy series of blog posts…
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I know is imperative to not modify preferences on TB and MB, but what about these:`
network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy
privacy.antitracking.enableWebcompat
browser.download.always_ask_before_handling_new_types
media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.video-toggle.enabled
browser.startup.homepage
browser.newtabpage.enabled
signon.rememberSignons
browser.urlbar.suggest.openpage
browser.urlbar.suggest.topsites
browser.urlbar.suggest.engines
I checked with creepjs and it shows the same results for trash, lies and crowd-blending score compared to vanilla MB.
This page won’t be for manipulating knobs on Firefox. We are not reintroducing that to Privacy Guides.
It will be about explaining:
- What fingerprinting is
- Types of fingerprinting, naive, vs complex (crowd)
- Various things that cannot be hidden etc
I have had some thoughts on this in Fingerprinting FAQ · Issue #1834 · privacyguides/privacyguides.org · GitHub
We want to also spend some time answers in this discussion:
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better metrics:
https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/
incase someone is really into fingerprinting techniques here are some research papers
I would love to see this expand to cover more information about cross-site tracking, stateful tracking, navigational tracking, and other unintended identification techniques, such as supercookies.
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Have Thorin of Arkenfox fame at least weigh in on this topic.
he has provided much input especially in the discussion thread linked above Firefox RFP and Brave's Fingerprint randomization. · privacyguides · Discussion #7 · GitHub
Only thing it’s waiting on is someone to have the time to put it all together nicely.
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Progress on this has seemed to have abruptly stopped. Is there a reason behind this, or did it simply fizzle out?
I believe this would be very helpful for everyone. One reason is there would be no need, for instance, to tell someone that CoverYourTracks is a “fairly unreliable website for testing fingerprinting,” and simply redirect them to the Fingerprinting Overview.
Moreover, it would save time for users . Previously, I wasted time testing my fingerprint on certain websites, thinking Librewolf was the “best browser” because it ticked all the boxes on CoverYourTracks’ test.
(Consequently, I was ignorant that those such as CoverYourTracks were utterly unreliable.)
Not simply just regarding Fingerprinting websites, but also so people are informed about it. An example can be knowing how Brave and Firefox’s fingerprinting protections work. Since an overview didn’t exist, it led to posts like this. (One of my favorite posts due to how informative it was.)