this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
219 points (97.0% liked)

Firefox

17849 readers
69 users here now

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I really enjoy Firefox on Android as I can install a bunch of extensions and I find those extensions game changer, especially on the mobile.

One of my favorites are

  • Libredirect - literally one of my favorite ones. Redirects popular sites to privacy focused frontends, like YouTube to Invidious, etc.
  • uBlock Origin - I guess everyone knows this one
  • Privacy Badger - blocks trackers
  • Ghostery - blocks trackers, ads, scripts, etc.

What extensions do you guys use?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Changing your user agent will not stop you being tracked. Browser fingerprinting can work with heaps of different signals, and is very difficult to block.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It means I'm being tracked for 30 seconds. So basically useless tracking.

Chameleon doesn't just change the user agent. It changes a bunch of stuff that's used to break fingerprinting. Of course you have a fingerprint, but it constantly changes so that the data they collect is so short lived that its useless to them and therefore very useful to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
  • Go here: https://fingerprint.com/demo/
  • Note your fingerprint ID
  • Wait whatever time you want
  • Try again
  • It's the same ID You can try to fool it with a VPN, change country, etc but it doesn't work. Fingerprinting is very strong these days.
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That website is marketing bullshit. It doesn't tell you if you fingerprint "ID" is unique. If can just spit out the same fingerprint for millions of users, and it looks impressive but its totally worthless as a fingerprint.

Try again with some service that isn't trying to sell you their product

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/index.html

Your extension might make you MORE finger-printable. Advanced fingerprinting scripts can detect lies told by extensions.

https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/3.3-Overrides-%5BTo-RFP-or-Not%5D#-fingerprinting

If you're actually interested in reducing your fingerprint you should read the arkenfox guide which leverages built in features from firefox. You'll see very quickly that if someone wants to fingerprint you it's trivial and there's little you can do short of TOR.

more reading: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/?h=fingerprint#anti-fingerprinting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Again, they can fingerprint me. Buy their fingerprint is useless because it constantly changes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You misunderstand. They're calculating a fingerprint that identifies you across sessions despite you changing up a bunch of values on your browser with an extension because that's all highly detectable. They know it's junk data they don't use it. It actually is worse because you stop blending in with the crowd.

You're better off blending in then trying to look unique with every visit. The latter is a flawed concept.

Read the arkenfox guide they get into it. Most extensions just reduce your ability to blend in to the crowd and thus should be avoided.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

They don't. I'm telling you they don't. When I disable my ad blocker, the ads I see are not relevant to me. Many times they're not even in a language that I can speak.

They are not tracking me between sessions. Its obvious.

What you're saying makes sense, and its why Tor does what it does. But in practice, this works too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you try with a Tor browser you'll get a unique ID everytime.

Feel free to try this one instead: https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint

Or whatever website you prefer, really. Fingerprinting is not solved by a single extension or checkbox. It's really hard.