this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Getting Fingerprint Detector reports about high number of fingerprinting API calls on Programming.dev instance.

Is there a reason for that? Not getting it on others instances. Report

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[–] Ategon 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Were currently just using base lemmy since pangora isn't done so not sure why we would be different from other instances. I can try to look into it

Update: I haven't been able to replicate jshelter showing high. I'm thinking though it might be something about lemmy 0.18.5 vs 0.18.4 since we're on 0.18.4 still. Lemmy.ml is on 0.18.5

Update #2: Was able to replicate it from a computer restart. Could not replicate it on other lemmy 0.18.4 instances

[–] snowe 5 points 1 year ago

dang.. I hate fingerprints. I have not modified anything of the sort on the instance, so I'm guessing it's something I have set in CloudFlare that is doing it? I'll look into it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hate to be a party pooper but the API usage in that log looks completely normal for a PWA... You should be looking at the outgoing network data instead IMO

Maybe one of the devs could advise better if you provide the frontend/client you're using, and what page you are experiencing the issue on, as well as other instances where it isn't happening

[–] mirkl 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It happens on 1st page load, then PWA create a lot of cached data.

It doesn't happen on other lemmy instances, maybe some, but you can check for example lemmy.ml.

You can check using JShelter Firefox addon. So basically application calls a lot of JS API calls to identify system capabilities even if they are not required by PWA. Results of such calls could be used to fingerprint your browser.

Maybe it is some JS library that checks capabilities to load polyfills?

vs

[–] snowe 1 points 1 year ago

Can you message me in a few days about this? I’m out of town and won’t have time to look into it for a least a few days but I really don’t like trackers and I’m not sure why programming.dev would have any trackers cuz I most definitely didn’t add them. (I run Firefox with ublock matrix, several other tracker prevention mechanisms including Firefox’s built in fingerprinting blocking, sometimes I switch to Orion which also has good tracking blocking).