Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Fingerprinting is really bad for privacy and the defenses against it are not there. See https://fingerprint.com. Tor Browser defeats it but I don't think there's a highly usable browser like Brave you can use and prevent being tracked by it.
    by Cider9986
  • I think this app is broken. Every time it refreshes it calls me a different name.
    by theteapot
  • Theres only one solution, ban third party advertising. Everything else is a compromise that doesnt work anyway.
    by MiroslavPokorny
  • The fingerprints don't need to be long-time-stable to be harmful. Some companies have your stable datapoints (e.g., email) and your fingerprint. Other companies only have your fingerprint on the same day/week. Some companies have locations of edge devices and the fingerprints. And there are companies out there that will take all of those data streams, both from above board and not-so-above-board players and mix them for commercial benefit.
    by aenis
  • I wonder if a browser extension could be made that inspects your fingerprint and informs you if you're too unique, then one-click to 'correct' those unique items (or at least list them), so you can conveniently go back to being ~anonymous if preferred.
    by nomilk
  • I've seen anti-fingerprinting plugins and browser configs, etc, but they all seem to make you more interesting for not being fingerprintable, or for turning off a lot of features used in fingerprinting.

    Is there any reason a browser or plugin couldn't just spoof the data used in fingerprinting to random values? So it emits different values for each page or resource you load?

    by helterskelter2
  • The problem is Javascript and its implementation. Plain HTML does not offer nearly as many fingerprinting opportunities. It's basically IP + user agent, both of which can be spoofed. Javascript grants websites far too much power over the user's browser, including disabling selection/paste, identifying hardware, time zone, language, etc. None of this should be allowed by default, and things like hardware acceleration and whatnot should be explicitly allowed on a case-by-case basis.
    by drnick1
  • Every time this resurfaces I like to remind people that this is mostly impractical and not how things actually work at the commercial level.

    Just because someone can theoretically demonstrate your fingerprint today doesn't mean you have the same fingerprint in a few days. It's that kind of stability that you actually need for consistent matching for advertising or tracking purposes.

    90% of commercial fingerprinting services still rely mostly on the IP address. Once you remove the IP address, you're left with a set of configurations that have a very short half life - volume settings, installed fonts, software versions, etc. You can expect a good portion of your audience to degrade within a couple of days. (Whereas a cookie has a life of 2 years - practically though they only survive a few months).

    What you actually pay for from third party vendors is a connection made around a more stable data point - a phone number, an email address, a user ID, etc. With one of these data points you can actually track people across multiple devices for as long as you want.

    by legitster

Explore Birbla archives