this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Privacy

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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.

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[–] DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 5 points 2 months ago

It identified my many-years-old phone with "360x760 pixels rendered at 3x density" screen as "recent, high-end display". Bitch, this wasn't even high-end when I bought it. It was small, it was cheap, it was barely "recent" when I bought it.

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The browser knows and shares way more than this... One of the worst offenders is the list of installed fonts. Pretty sure I stick out so hard just on that.

[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

List of fonts is in there.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago

I hit it with Firefox and it gave 24 points. Firefox refused to disclose my battery level. But did give it my angular geometry.

I opened it in Brave and it lied about my screen resolution and colored up my fonts, my battery. It refused to give up my angular geometry.

Why the hell doesn't firefox just include some of those white lies?

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I’m honestly not impressed. Basic IP address that didn’t really provide an accurate location, plus the (no shit sherlock) state and country it was in. Told me it was ios, a browser, and that I’d turned a bunch of stuff off.

That’s it.

[–] WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Got me to disable sendrefererheader. We'll see if that breaks anything....

[–] iByteABit@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Interesting, I wonder how unique the fingerprinting is though, they don't give you any specific stats.

Is it really possible to identify me with like 1/100 precision for example, if you don't have my real IP, real country, no trackers, and all you have is a list of fonts, my graphics card, and the browser info?

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