Cookie Auto Delete (and similar extensions) doesn't really help of you enable FF's built-in Total Cookie Protection (which you should).
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
88 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
44331 readers
1017 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Couple interesting resources:
These mostly just tell you how fucked you are though. The latter has some resources about how to deal with it, but it's not that useful. The former is really good at breaking down the datapoints that are fucking you.
A lot of this stuff isn't really something I'd want to remove, too. Like javascript knowing the viewport size or my timezone. Frustrating.
Edit to add: Found this as well which has some good info for configuring Firefox. Some things seem extreme to me, but it's quite informative. https://avoidthehack.com/firefox-privacy-config
I use LibreWolf which implements pretty tough fingerprint mitigation... but I end up disabling a lot of it because it breaks a lot of sites.
I use LibreWolf and then turn a fair chunk of the mitigations off. Itβd be nice to have all the mitigations on, but I started to tire of every site not being dark mode at night, or the time being incorrect, or the JavaScript on the site breaking, or various other things when I donβt really care about the tracking.
It was also difficult or annoying to turn these mitigations off on a site-by-site basis for known-okay or trusted sites. Maybe someone could educate me, here though.
I use ungoogled-chromium in tandem with LibreWolf, the former for sites broken by the latter.
Why don't you use DarkReader if I may ask?
Here is a good article to give you an overview and ideas how to mitigate fingerprinting.
The sad irony of that site asking me to accept tracking by them and their 214 partners.
I use noscript so I didn't see this.
Keep that using things like ublock and noscript make you stand out like a sore thumb for fingerprinting. Iβm definitely NOT saying you shouldnβt use them, just spreading awareness.
For sure, if way more people used them the fingerprint would get smudged. That being said noscript would break the internet for the average user and degrade their browsing experience so I don't see mass adoption of that awesome add-on. Ublock however is so simple it should be in everyones add-on list.
Solid advice though!
Thank you for sharing this
So I've decided that trying to remove fingerprints completely is pointless, pretty difficult and overall unpleasant to deal with. What I think might be the better alternative is using extensions like Canvas Defender which give random fake values to the sites trying to fingerprint you.
Do be aware though, this means that coveryourtracks cannot give you an accurate look at how well you're protected, because in this case you'll want to have a unique fingerprint every time you surf the web. Attempts to block are unsuccessful most of the time, but overwhelming with information and random data feels like the way to go for now.
Yea I agree. Trying to remove all tracking is futile. There are 3 reasons I still try. The least important of which is protecting my own privacy.
I personally see it as a moral imperative to, when able, do something to stand against evil (hyperbolic as that may be). But the most important reason is to defend my family. Given how interconnected our data is, any datapoint on myself is a datapoint on them.
As you say, trying to remove fingerprints is pointless, but I can mitigate the impact to the best of my ability
No yeah, I totally agree fingerprinting is despicable. I just mentioned my preferred way to get around it
You caught my attention. What are the names of those two extensions?
No op, but i use
I still don't care about cookies
and one of many cookie autodelete extensions
those are the ones
Check out Mullvad Browser, which is based on FF. It has always showed up as giving a non-unique fingerprint for me on the EFF site.
Does Mullvad just create random print everytime you get new identity. I think the idea is to just keep switching it
Tor Browser is designed to look like every other running Tor Browser on a somewhat-similar screen, if you use it.