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Mozilla Firefox gets new anti-fingerprinting defenses (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 39 points 1 year ago

Great for Firefox (which I use), and for all forks...

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    [+] 28 points 1 year ago (8 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    All the AI (except for one opt-in feature that lets you choose what service to use) is on-device, so although It's not really necessary, you can't really say it's bad for privacy.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Also, the one feature I've come across (long press a link for a preview) is actually pretty useful sometimes. I'm actually impressed they discovered a use for generative AI that isn't annoying and stupid.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    On-device translation is also exactly what I want out of this tech and we have it. You can even just go to about:translations. This isn’t 2001 anymore, you shouldn’t be using someone else’s server to translate something quick for you. Not at first pass at least.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ditto! I've used it a couple times before. Pretty snazzy. I'm wondering what goes on behind long press feature.....hey, why not ask Duck.ai itself:

    I've spared the.....'less tolerant of AI' among us. I hear you. Some of you have good points. Just trying to be accommodating. 😃

    Understanding the Long Press Feature

    spoiler

    The long press feature is a common interaction design element used in touch interfaces, such as smartphones and tablets. Let's break down how it works and what happens behind the scenes. How Long Press Works

    A long press typically involves two main phases: touch detection and action execution.

    Touch Detection:
    When a user touches the screen, the device starts a timer.
    If the touch continues for a predetermined duration (usually around 300-700 milliseconds), the device recognizes it as a long press.
    Different platforms may have slightly different thresholds for detecting a long press.

Action Execution:
    After detecting a long press, the system triggers a specific action. This could be displaying a context menu, enabling additional options, or initiating a particular function (e.g., selecting text or moving an item).

    Behind the Scenes

    Event Handling:
    Most touch-based operating systems have an event listener that monitors touch events (e.g., touchstart, touchmove, touchend).
    A long press action typically involves the touchstart event initializing a timer, while the touchend event can either reset the timer or trigger the long press action.

Feedback Mechanisms:
    Visual feedback, such as highlighting or showing a loading indicator, is often provided during the long press to confirm to the user that their action is recognized.
    Haptic feedback (vibrations) may also be used to enhance the user experience.

User Experience Considerations:
    Developers must carefully select the actions triggered by a long press to avoid conflicts with other gestures, like taps or swipes.
    Testing across various devices ensures that the long press feature feels consistent for users.

    Applications of Long Press

    Contextual Menus: Allow users to access additional options relevant to the selected item.
Drag and Drop: Users may long press an item to initiate drag-and-drop functionality.
Editing Options: In text fields, a long press may bring up options to copy, paste, or select.

    In essence, the long press feature is a versatile tool in touch interfaces, enhancing interactivity by providing users with contextual options without cluttering the screen with buttons.

    • Not responsible for inaccurate information
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hey slopper that's not at all what a long press is or how it works. Long presses are when you press with the side of your finger cuz its longer duh! It works the same as regular press they just add a wait timer so the BPU (brained processing unit) doesn't get over stimulated and stuck.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    LOL

    There is a phenom on the internet that says, if you want the real answer to your question, log in to a forum, ask the question then log out. Then log in as secondary user and give the wrong answer. In a matter of seconds you will be inundated with the right answer.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    it's hard to blame them: the entirety of technology is trying to adopt AI due to all of the money that's being flashed at them for doing so; our entire economy is based on it right now.

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    • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Cloudflare and captcha take note. Stop fingerprinting us!

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    • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
    • The available screen resolution is the screen height minus 48 pixels.

    Isn’t it pointless to change all device screens from their constant size of 1,080 to a reported size of 1,080 - 48 or (whatever x,xxx - 48)?

    Why not report x,xxx as random # ? Or does that start to identify more than make one blend in?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The more unique it is, the more easy to find you. That's why anti-fingerprinting is a problem because removing tracking makes you more unique compared to millions of devices with the same data tracked.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    That would make you more fingerprint able. The idea is to make more computers look the same, not make you unique.

    They're saying that they don't tell the site the size of the browser window, but the screen size minus a reasonable margin for the toolbar and stuff

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    • [+] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Strong disagree. That literally saves peoples lives.

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    • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The available screen resolution is the screen height minus 48 pixels.

    How does this help woth fingerprinting?

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    [+] 0 points 1 year ago* (1 child)
    [deleted]
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    • 15 comments in c/privacy@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I remember thinking how strange it is that websites can know all of your installed fonts when I was playing around with https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ and https://www.amiunique.org/

    I'm on linux and I have some extra fonts installed. Just the combination of them alone is so unique to me that you don't need anything else.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    The second big one for me is how shocking I find it that timezone spoofing isn’t standard, now that so many people use VPNs. Why would someone connecting from Sweden have their clock set to GMT? Etc

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    One known problem is that on Firefox for Linux, every font you install via the package manager becomes a System Font, and thus is immediately "visible" as soon as Use Document Fonts is enabled, irrespective of the setting for CSS font visibility. I've even asked about here if it is possible to run multiple fontservers on a single session, as that would help palliate the fingerprinting by running Firefox profiles connected to different font lists.

    As a relatively useful alternative, you can have Firefox profiles on different users, each having their own fontset available at .local/share/fonts, but for that to work you also have to remove all those extra fonts you installed via the package manager.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh interesting I wasn't aware of how all of these things work. So even on the strictest CSS font visibility setting system fonts are not hidden (provided Document Fonts is enabled)? Local fonts I assume are hidden?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    From comments in the bug report I got the feeling they should have, but aren't; proably because of intrinsic issues with what it means to be a "system" component.

    I have no means to test in Firefox Linux if local fonts are hidden because I don't know what makes a font "local" either. Any font placed where the fontserver looks for them (be it system paths or .local/share/fonts) seems to count as "system", which is why I specifically suggest using .local/share/fonts with different users: it's the only path where you can offer variability. More importantly, CSS font visibility settings seem to mostly be intended for Javascript-based fingerprinting, and they do not work at all against CSS-based fingerprinting.

    I am pending to raise an issue ticket to make it so that "Use Document Fonts" becomes a Site Preference instead of a Global Preference; that should go a very long way to enhance privacy in these cases. Once I do, I'll link it here.

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    • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Hopefully this helps to get around some of the bullshit reddit banning

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    brave have it, but it doesnt look it will, reddit is too smart for that. you need things to spoof you fingerprint, IP address, device and components. im on a forum where they use anti-detect browser(not an actual browser, but to open instances of a browser using different ip/devices,,,etc) to manage all of this, plus you need an reddit account thats not tainted. i think reddit is too used to mozilla already, things adspower, dolphin anty, is one of many that does this.

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    • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Very good to see these changes, but could somebody explain this one to me? I don't understand how that helps with fingerprinting protection...

    The available screen resolution is the screen height minus 48 pixels.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    If I had to guess is because you can be tracked by your screen resolution too, It's just a way to minimize that. If you start tor browser, for example, it does not open full screen but only occupy a smaller window, for the same reason

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    You can be, duckduckgo was accurately profiling my location from resolution. Librewolf has a setting called letterboxing that fixes this, but you have to turn it on in about:config. Once I did, duckduckgo's profile wasn't accurate anymore.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You absolutely can be tracked by screen resolution, especially when using a monitor with unusual resolution (few years ago I was still using 1440x900 so I understand this well). I just don't understand how this specific change would help prevent that.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    At one point, years ago, they were talking about removing the screen resolution entirely, and just make it a copy of the window size values instead.

    Guessing it broke too much stuff, since it seemed like a nice idea but never eventuated.

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    • 2 comments in c/news@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show view that post
    [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    After reading this I updated to strict tracking to see if it really breaks everything. Its pretty good barely notice a difference.

    Hopefully one day strict tracking can be so stable it becomes the default. And the current default is renamed to rawdog.

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