Any hardened version of Firefox, like LibreWolf, would be my main choice.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Privacy
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I wanna go a bit beyond, like I'm using arkenfox's user.js but it's not as complete as i would, and I'm using some extensions, and the main part that i would improve is my fingerprinting, any ideas? And for android, going to use Mull but do you have any recommendations?
Extensions installed on any browser make your fingerprint more unique. For PC your best option against fingerprinting would probably be using n unmodified mullvad browser, and on android, mull, with the least extensions posible.
Humm, okay, but for example is there any possibility to spoof normal installation to websites?
Chameleon ff extension
I looked into this a while ago. It seems the best you can do is to try to look the most "average". All attempts to obfuscate details other than "average" make you stand out even worse.
Seems like you have a better idea than I do about privacy so I'm probably not gonna be much help. However make sure that you use extensions that you trust or use as few permissions as possible because that also can be another vector where information can leak.
Oh and there was a post on here sometime ago about a website that show what kind of information it can get from your web browser so you could use that to check how much info you are leaking on the web at least.
For Firefox based browsers: https://arkenfox.github.io/TZP/tzp.html
For all browsers (more generalist): https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/
Wooo that list is crazy 🤯
That's a lot of information, for me at least. Short of searching for what those mean individually, is there a recommended way to learn more about these? Like how they ultimately effect people or could be used maliciously or effect security or privacy?
I have no usable programming skills and my knowledge in this subject is limited to roughly what I've learned from https://amiunique.org but those two links seem to be on a whole different level.
Maybe better questions to ask would be: How could a layman understand these things better? Is it feasible to learn more without extensive college level classes on programming and/or computer science? Should the average person need to worry, assuming they have nothing more to hide than a less-than-average bank account balance or habitual browsing of adult media which to the best of their knowledge is legal and consensual where they live and who have no social media or social life or ties to political movements, major corporations, news organizations, critical infrastructure or charities?
Each are data points that together contribute to your total fingerprint. TZP tells you a lot of these data points, and fails ones that dont match Firefox Resistant Fingerprint masked data. Creepjs does much of the same but without gearing towards Firefox.
Generally fingerprintable things include:
Do not track signal.
Private browsing mode.
Timezone.
Useragent.
Canvas noise.
Installed fonts.
Font sizes.
Browser built-in plugins.
Some extensions.
WebRTC.
Theme.
Cookies.
IP address.
Local IPs (website can execute an ip scan and fingerprint).
Window viewport size.
Full screen mode viewport sizing.
Page/font color settings.
Operating System (impossible to mask because of differences in rendering on platforms).
Browser App name & icon.
System TTS synthesis engine.
DOM modification fingerprinting (like that used by many extensions).
Mouse speed.
Keyboard behavior.
Stylometric fingerprinting.
And many more.
🙏
Nice off-topic comment. Pretty sure by now everybody is aware of that (and other posts) on the topic of using a license.
How do you know everyone is aware? Did you poll them?
Also, this is my new signature line, so thanks.
What is the Anti Commercial-Al license and why do people keep adding it to their comments?
Also, this is my new signature line, so thanks.
You're welcome. I appreciate you helping out with normalizing signature lines.
This is a tough situation because the more changes to settings you make the more unique you will appear. Less is more in this case, libre wolf or Mullvad are both good Firefox based browsers with good defaults. My biggest recommendation to add is a cookie auto delete plugin, or if you dont need to keep anything logged in even better just have it delete cookies on shutdown.
That's exactly right. A hardened fork of Firefox, enjoy.
+1 on that. LibreWolf, use the compartments feature and clean cookies and history every time you close the browser. And you come a long way.
That's my goto browser on desktop and Mull on mobile. No regrets. Keep my bookmarks on Nextcloud and sync via Floccus.
I know those are all real but this sentence is objectively hilarious
reminds me of that one meme making fun of streaming company names like "You can watch it on Pidoo. just sign up for Dupoos. stream it on LippyLopp."
I don't see it, so please do share. Honestly, I'd love to know too. I'm not the type of person that gets easily offended. Heck, my friends and I show our live through incessant reciprocal bullying.
I know it's hard to believe here, but I'm all for laughing at myself, and even share it with my wife to give her some bullying ammo too, haha.
No no, I’m not laughing at you. It’s the names of the services that are cracking me up. You didn’t do anything
Ok. And I apologize. Since English is not my native language, sometimes I still get confused with figure of speech. However, I don't mind people laughing at me, with me or even at my expense. We humans are silly creatures, and life is just too stresses it is, laughing, regardless of the reason, should always be enjoyed.
Having said that, you're exactly right. Floccus does sound funny. I'm going to try it on my kids today, see how that goes. Something along the lines of "go clean all that Floccus" and enjoy the confusion on their faces 😝
No need to apologize haha! You were giving good advice and didn’t do anything funny. It’s just tech names that are funny. I appreciate your attitude fwiw and your English is better than mine, so it not being your first language is not apparent at all
You've done it now. I'm on my way to brag to my boss, lol.
Spreading libre software will bring more privacy than micromanaging browser config ever will. Report issues to get defaults fixed and don't waste your life reinventing.
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Hummm, gonna download the entire web, and speak with smoke signals 👍👍
Browse more with a TUI browser like w3m or elinks. A good website should be able to provide a decent UX even on these browsers which have too few features to exploit (namely no JavaScript). You could work it into a workflow like opening docs in a terminal split or setting one as your default browser in a TUI feedreader like Newsboat.