Will disabling smooth mouse scrolling in Mullvad Browser make me stand out?

Questions
1

Hello,

I can’t stand smooth mouse scrolling so I have to toggle general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel from true to false in the Mullvad browser, but won’t that make me stand out?

2

Don’t mess with any Mullvad browser settings - is the standard recommendation for a reason.

Yes, that can be a fingerprint.

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3

This is good general advice for both Mullvad and Tor Browser, but the question is specifically of technical matter.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that only settings which affect the webpage impacts fingerprinting.[1] Firstly, can anyone confirm whether that is true or not? I assume it is true since it was marked as a solution to the post and was written by a trustworthy user.

Secondly (assuming the source is true), the question would therefore be whether or not general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel affects what gets loaded on the webpage.

I might be wrong, but I don’t see how the type of scrolling would affect the webpage. Can you explain why it would be a fingerprint?

  1. Fingerprinting question for Mullvad Browser - #4 by jonah ↩︎

1 Like
4

Well, it could be fingerprintable according to this

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5

Oh man, wtf. Bowsers really do share all info possible don’t they..

Here is the direct link to the scroll fingerprint from the thread: scrolling

And yes, you do not even have to scroll for it.

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6

settings which affect the webpage impacts fingerprinting

In this case it is a setting that impacts the webpage. Even in other cases, fingerprinting is still possible. A common method is by tracking unique user agents which are sent to the webserver as a part of the GET (and other HTTP) request.[1]

The aforementioned setting is part of the window API to access data about the current position of the browser frame. Since the current position can be measured, changes to it can also be measured and therefore it is possible to differentiate between a user scrolling smoothly and not.

  1. ↩︎

7

You can go to Page Current Scroll Position (Live) on https://www.deviceinfo.me/ and clearly see how normal and smooth scrolling looks different to a webpage.

I wish Mullvad could have some sort of community voting on settings. Smooth scroll is borderline unuseable for me since it gives me motion sicknessless.

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8

This is all very concerning… Thank you guys @user1 @su @Volk for the technical sources and information!

This shows how Privacy Guides is in desperate need for a fingerprinting overview to translate and disseminate this knowledge to lay people, as discussed here a few years ago on Privacy Guides’ GitHub.

1 Like