alt Hacker NewsI am not sure that ad blocking is enough now or in the future as fingerprinting is extremely hard to fight while keeping a convenient web experience. Of course, continue blocking for convenience, but for privacy, more robust solutions are needed. Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com
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I beat it with Firefox, UBO, standard Firefox advanced tracking protection, and a VPN.
It was able to track me as long as my IP address didn't change, but as soon as I switched VPN endpoints, it gave me a new identifier.
The EFF's fingerprint test is nice in that it breaks down a lot of the bits of data used, and lets you know how you compare etc:
> https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
You quickly discover how difficult it really is to avoid a unique fingerprint.
Lots of folks in this thread are focusing on DNS and VPN to avoid detection, which of course can help, but a huge number of identifiable bits come from your browser's APIs:
User Agent
Screen Size and Color Depth
System Fonts
Hash of canvas fingerprint
Hash of WebGL fingerprint
WebGL Vendor & Renderer
Touch Support
AudioContext fingerprint
Hardware Concurrency
Device Memory
Platform
Language
Timezone
Timezone offset
Browser Plugin Details
etc etc
> Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com
I don’t know, but it seems like it’s overselling its capabilities. I tried with Firefox Focus and it said I’m using incognito (private mode) and assigned a unique visitor ID. Immediately tried with a private tab in Safari on iOS and it said I’m not using incognito (private mode) and assigned a new unique visitor ID. Then I switched networks and tried. One more unique visitor ID.
I’m not claiming that fingerprinting is not possible, but this website is not good at it. Seems like it uses plain cookies.
Doesn't this just identify you as "that one guy who blocks fingerprinting"?
It's similar to when you use Linux or an obscure privacy-preserving browser. You've made yourself way more unique just by doing that.
(I'm not sure how the math works out though, vs. actually running all that nasty tracking stuff.)
What does "try to beat this" mean?
I just opened it in another browser and got another ID. Did I win?
For some reason using Microsoft Edge is deemed suspicious.
iPhone with private relay seems to defeat that
Use Mullvad Browser or Brave (both require no extensions to block ads, with mullvad browser being modelled off of tor. Use data traffic fingerprint obfuscation even behind vpn (yes they can tell if you're messaging, watching a video, torrenting, etc 90% of the time even behind vpn) use mullvads daita (makes packets the same size) or nymvpn (mixnet with tor like routing and in built delays). Tor doesn't protect against traffic analysis at all.
"Enable JS to run the demo"
> Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com
I beat it, I think... nothing much there. I use a VPN and NextDNS.io.
Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience.
More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time.