[HN Gopher] Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting (2020)
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       Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting (2020)
        
       Author : marginalia_nu
       Score  : 59 points
       Date   : 2022-03-24 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (smitop.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (smitop.com)
        
       | nerdbaggy wrote:
       | His other article is really interesting in what data they collect
       | https://smitop.com/post/whiteops-data/
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | TechBro8615 wrote:
         | Has anyone done a MITM analysis of 3rd party clients like
         | Apollo? I assume that using them affords a significant level of
         | protection from any client-based Reddit tracking measures, but
         | that's only assuming Apollo doesn't do something like add a
         | unique User-Agent to each user's request (and of course, Reddit
         | can still collect the server-side IP/networking fingerprints).
        
         | nimbius wrote:
         | oof. running IE11 exploits (feels illegal here...), elevating
         | to vbscript, testing the boundaries of the JIT, checking for
         | screenshotting, observing for brave browser and communicating
         | with two shady blank page sites...
         | 
         | not since the port scanning from ebay have i seen something
         | this reprehensible
        
       | kyleee wrote:
       | not a surprise, a lot of the fingerprinting code attempts to use
       | every feature possible, that's why you'll see random messages in
       | the console sometimes saying "site tried to access $feature'
       | where feature is location, canvas, etc. etc.
        
         | can16358p wrote:
         | Is it the reason that all the pages on "modern" reddit are
         | extremely bloated, laggy, and resource-draining even on fast
         | systems?
        
       | lizardactivist wrote:
       | That site has turned into a Pentagon-friendly echo-chamber, and
       | opinions that even slightly "disturb the reverb" are viciously
       | attacked and down-voted to invisibility.
       | 
       | Being able to quickly register new "throw-away" accounts is
       | useful for those with the "right" opinion, and because of the
       | fingerprinting and tracking, useless to those with the "wrong"
       | opinion.
        
         | moron4hire wrote:
         | What are some examples of wrong opinions?
        
           | Terry_Roll wrote:
           | Click on the sort by Best to Controversial. Comments can be
           | quite funny, there is a lot of psychological manipulation on
           | reddit, just like other social media platforms like twitter
           | and others.
        
           | naoqj wrote:
           | I know how this works: someone will show an example and
           | someone else will say that decent human beings don't think
           | like that and that they deserve to be silenced.
        
         | qzx_pierri wrote:
         | The people downvoting you are proving your point. I agree
         | though. Reddit is a massive echo chamber. It's almost worse
         | than Twitter. Almost.
        
       | oversocialized wrote:
        
       | oh_sigh wrote:
       | Just a few weeks ago, I had multiple of my 15 year accounts
       | permanently suspended from reddit, for no apparent reason*, with
       | no recourse. A few days later I tried to create an account, and
       | it was immediately permanently suspended as well.
       | 
       | Then, I cleared all of my cookies/autofill/local storage data,
       | connected to my phone's hotspot (which I had never done before),
       | and made another account, and it still got banned shortly
       | thereafter. I have to guess this is why they are fingerprinting.
       | 
       | * They said it was for ban evasion, but I wasn't banned anywhere
       | as far as I knew. The only thing I can guess is that their
       | systems grouped my accounts with someone else's accounts(maybe we
       | connected via the same coffee shop hotspot at one point, or
       | something), they got banned, and then it looked like they were
       | evading the ban with my accounts.
        
         | akomtu wrote:
         | Same IP + same User-Agent already tells with high confidence
         | that it's the same user. And that's without JS.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-24 23:00 UTC)