Came across this article and it got me thinking, are there any simple ways to defeat advanced tracking methods (fingerprinting, tracking pixels, etc.)?
Obviously you could go the Tor on a virtual machine route, or a non persistent set up like TAILS, but what about a browser that’s able to give say, a 80% solution?
I work in the security industry and am always looking for the solution that is simple enough that its palatable to a client (not asking to change your whole lifestyle, just push this button) but also relatively effective.
Google:
They’ve been asking us not to track them with cookies, so we’re tracking them with fingerprints
Surely the gdpr has something to say about this. Or did the US forget the rest of the wold exists again?
Thats why their ToS is different in the EU.
Could I use a VPN to some place in the EU in order to have the different ToS
That might be possible, but Im not 100℅.
If they already have your fingerprint in the browser or device, they might not care. Idk.
Perhaps Qubes.
Exactly, Google even advocated against the use of more intrusive tracking technology like fingerprinting stating it was too intrusive, I’ll be the first to say I’m pro capitalist (if you can work hard and get rich, power to you), but when you are willing to invade the literal physical privacy of people who do not even want your products, it calls into question the legitimacy of your company.
Lmao this guy thinks hard work is what makes people rich instead of massive amounts of exploitation in an inherently exploitative economic system…
I think you’re missing the point of a free market, I’m not advocating for exploiting people, I’m simply agreeing with the concept of having a good idea or a strong work ethic to generate your own wealth, WITHOUT exploiting peoples’ civil liberties. The part I disagree with as is illustrated by massive corporations like Google, is when they center their business model around the concept of stealing and marketing peoples’ personal information. There are in fact ways you can make a living without negatively impacting others.
Capitalism always involves exploiting people, and free market ideals exacerbate the issue.
So you like capitalism: the prequel and all the lies they say to get the soul crushing machine ready, but disagree with post-capitalist aka the actual soul crushing machine… crushing soul?
How old are you? Anybody who has worked in the current climate knows you don’t get ahead just by working hard. I have worked hard for over a decade now, and im still just an employee at company Z with employee number 12345. This idea that working hard will get you somewhere is naive as fuck.
I’m the first one in my family to start building any semblance of generational wealth for my kids, you CAN do that by working hard and being smart with your money, you don’t have to back stab people to accrue wealth. I’m not planning on being a multimillionaire, and I don’t need money to be happy. But you can invest yourself and your earnings in industries that you personally believe in, that also improve your community. I’m very meticulous with who I decide to do business with, I personally despise mega corporations that monopolize markets. All I’m saying is that it is possible to believe in a free market without exploiting your fellow statesmen.
Being pro-capitalist on this website is gonna make you stick out like a sore thumb
Exactly, and we wouldn’t want people with different opinions, experiences or mindsets on this website would we.
I appreciate that you are standing for moral dignities like personal privacy. But understand, Google’s entire business model IS surveillance capitalism.
Profits aren’t infinite if the resource is finite. Eventually, they would have to dig the mineshaft deeper, take more material to sell more product. This is what happens when capital is left laissez-faire, it grows more tentacles.
I love capitalists stepping on me
Uhh, okay?
What a bunch of BS.
I am also pro being able to form your own future by giving an extra hand to the world.
I do however disagree on the part where you have to be born into certain privileges to be able to do this. Yes, giving extra should mean you get extra but all in accordance to individual abilities an privilege. Someone born rich should have it significantly harder to make more than someone born poor for example.
They don’t give a F about any one and any laws as long as they get away with it. That’s late stage capitalism for you.
Any country trying to protect itself from US big tech gets threatened by tariffs, of course
That is way you go up that orange ass
Check out EFF cover your tracks: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
The results are very interesting. For me, the most unique thing about my browser was that I had two system languages, and so the accept-language header was very unique.
I now use vanadium (graphene OS), which simply sends made up values for a lot of headers, and so makes fingerprinting harder.
In general, you should try to be as “normal” as possible, use standard settings for everything, just accept English, etc…
Vanadium on Graphene is actually what I use as well haha, its just hard to convince people who already have enough on their plate with their actual jobs to make the lifestyle switch without it being viewed as very burdensome.
That’s a very interesting site, thank you!
It looks like the screen size is the most identifying info for me, followed by the webGL hash. Not much can be done about those on mobile right?
i use uMatrix (by the same author as uBlock Origin), which essentially allows very granular control over what dynamic content to allow:
per domain and subdomain you can allow script, xhr, media, frames, cookies, images, css, and other things
so you can say, for example, on lemm.ee deny any scripts from google.com from loading and deny any xhr (so analytics can’t work even if the script is hosted on the sites own domain)
this stops a lot of fingerprinting in its tracks (except when you need to allow eg reCAPTCHA), but it does break pretty much every website until you go and allow only known good things (like scripts and xhr to the sites own domain)
there’s also server-side fingerprinting, which is harder again
This looks to be an excellent tool, thanks for sharing and have a good one.
you’re welcome! you too!
it should be noted though that it hasn’t been updated since 2021, and its repo has been archived (i’m not sure of the reasons). it still works great, but it’s not going to get any updates
I wouldn’t have known, it’s very granular and not for the faint of heart (or technically limited.) Just what OP asked for!
Its functionality is pretty much built into uBlock Origin now, see https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering.
i’ve tried using dynamic filtering before, but honestly the UI for it is horrible… their example they give for allowing youtube embeds shows my issue with it pretty well:
their solution is either to allow everything from google.com and youtube.com, or to allow all 3rd party frames
uMatrix allows me to, for example, allow 3rd party frames only from youtube.com, and block cookies for those same frames (heck you could even allow frames and block CSS originating from google if that worked!)
this is particularly useful for analytics services… sometimes the whole page won’t load if an analytics script doesn’t load, so you can allow only scripts and block xhr so it can’t send pings back home
Yeah it’s definitely more “logical” and easier to use the way uMatrix does it.
gimme an advanced advanced mode that mimicks the uMatrix UI and i’d donate monthly for sure - uMatrix is one of my most used tools! i’d switch to uBO if the UI were as powerful
It’s lying to get out of something.
targeted ads are stupid anyway, i dont want to hear about stuff i could look up myself if i need something. Constant ads are even more stupid because its just stuffing their stupid corporate shit down our throats.
There should be one opt in ad service that collects all the possible ads and you then just browse it like a catalog or something if you want to find ideas what to buy.
I will keep my adblocker until contextual ads are the norm again.
Firefox (with good settings, or Librewolf) + uBlock Origin + Decentraleyes + NoScript (with default permissions removed) is probably > 80%.
DecentralEyes is deprecated, LocalCDN is actively maintained.
NoScript is superfluous with uBo
Wouldn’t tails be just as trackable as say a browser that clears all its cookies?
LibreWolf or Brave. I use Brave personally, it’s okay
The CEO of Brave is a fascist dickhead btw
Mullvard browser
+1 for brave. Definitely a great browser :)
The only thing i use google for is lens and couldnt find a good replacement for it,Tineye is subpar.
