this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
739 points (96.7% liked)
Privacy
48499 readers
755 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's been a few years since I was invested in this topic, but I think the "meta" for reconciling the tension between blocking tracking and unique fingerprinting was to, in some cases, spoof information rather than outright block it.
Tor browser does that by default, though a few years ago when I tried to use it as a daily driver it was too tedious thanks to cloudflare.
Most of my research regarding browsers was focused on computers. Now that Firefox mobile can run extensions some of this might be mitigated that way.
Blocking JavaScript unfortunately makes you super unique but the tradeoff is probably worth it imo. I don't want every random site I visit to immediately run a bunch of code, especially third party nonsense. Even if it makes my traffic stand out.
For most threat models I suspect unrestricted JavaScript is more dangerous than the potential for fingerprint-based tracking. Or at least JavaScript is very likely to leak multiple unique data points, whereas a "blocks JavaScript flag" is just a single unique identifier.
Sandboxing and siloing can also mitigate some of the risk, and is relatively painless once implemented.
All of it comes down to threat model and motivation. You can probably get like 70% better privacy/security for 20% of the work, which is a good standard for a typical usecase/person. Install ublock, disable some of the higher risk and less useful tracking (websites don't need my fucking battery and gyroscope).
Diminishing returns start to hit hard, in part due to the passive fingerprinting / active tracking tension, due to cloudflare, due to everyone around you that doesn't give a shit. Anything on the other end of the risk spectrum should just be done without a smartphone in the vicinity, if possible.