[HN Gopher] Brave browser simplifies its fingerprinting protections
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Brave browser simplifies its fingerprinting protections
Author : Tomte
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-01-22 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| alecsm wrote:
| So there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
|
| We remove the privacy settings because otherwise webs won't work.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| I've lost hope. My amiunique.org fingerprint is always unique.
|
| I'd like my web browser to peach less on me. Websites don't
| need to know my primary browsing language is en-gb, I'm rather
| proficient in other written dialects.
|
| They don't need to fingerprint my audio setup.
|
| It seems like browsers were conceived at a time when
| surveillance capitalism didn't exist and they still behave like
| thar
| Reptur wrote:
| What I don't understand is, why can't we just have a browser
| that doesn't give any of those details that is used to
| determine unique a browser. It doesn't make sense to allow a
| website to have access to that info.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I think we can? I mean, technically it's possible. Maybe it
| even already exists.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| There are such projects. The problem is that so few people
| use such browsers that just having that browser is often
| enough to fingerprint you.
| santoshalper wrote:
| The most popular browsers are all funded by advertising,
| which has entirely consumed the web.
| shiandow wrote:
| You mean like the tor-browser? It's not that they don't
| exist it's more that they're pointless if they're not used
| by lots of people.
|
| Personally I'm more in favour of randomizing some of the
| properties. That way you don't need to rely on being
| unique. In the end it's all about how much information
| you're transmitting about your identity, and while picking
| a common value is one way of increasing entropy picking a
| _random_ value is much more effective.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I've never understood why websites need to be able to get a
| list of installed fonts.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Try implementing Photoshop as a web app without it.
| vdaea wrote:
| I've never understood why someone would want to implement
| Photoshop as a web app.
| stavros wrote:
| You can ask for permission, like browsers already do for
| a ton of things.
| wnevets wrote:
| > I've never understood why websites need to be able to get
| a list of installed fonts.
|
| I assumed it was a left over from the early days of the web
| before fonts were a thing.
| jorvi wrote:
| Brave actually has font protection I believe :)
| lolinder wrote:
| > My amiunique.org fingerprint is always unique.
|
| A bit of an aside, but I love that their data set consists of
| 26% Linux users and 41% Firefox users.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > It seems like browsers were conceived at a time when
| surveillance capitalism didn't exist and they still behave
| like thar
|
| It's worse than that - the world's most popular browser was
| created by a company which gets most of its competitive
| advantage and, arguably, revenue from surveillance
| capitalism. The incentive to make fingerprinting hard is not
| just 0, it's negative.
| IX-103 wrote:
| False.
| https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9682282?hl=en
|
| Google doesn't like fingerprinting. That may be because
| they already have all your identities and don't want
| competition, but they still don't like fingerprinting.
| quincepie wrote:
| "Fewer than 0.5% of Brave users are using Strict fingerprinting
| protection mode, based on our privacy-preserving telemetry data."
|
| I think this is likely because people who go on their way to
| switch to using strict mode are more likely to disable the
| telemetry as well.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I mean, this is a press release way of saying they're removing
| Strict fingerprinting protection, not that it's being simplified.
|
| That said, I get it. I have all the fingerprint protection stuff
| turned on in Firefox, and it breaks a lot of sites. In fact, it
| hurts the UX of _most_ of the sites I use a lot, and completely
| breaks a lot of them. There are some critical websites where I
| just have to load up Chrome if I 'm going to use them at all.
|
| And their point about it being self-defeating if so few people
| use fingerprinting protection that you can more easily identify
| them uniquely by the fact that they use it. I've wondered about
| that myself.
|
| So I think it's cool to get rid of it in their browser, and I
| like their explanation of the reasoning, I just don't like the
| weasel-word "simplify" to describe it.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Is there a way to randomize a few inconsequential ones of these
| on each page load? i.e. subtle canvas rendering changes, report
| adding or removing a few installed fonts.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| Hey brave, get ride of crypto stuff and you'll get users back
|
| You guy are actually building a good browser
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| New CEO could sweeten the deal as well.
| mamidon wrote:
| Everyone has to earn a living, not just people who have the
| same values as you.
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(page generated 2024-01-22 23:00 UTC)