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Comment by monk_the_dog | Hacker News Reader

I am a happy customer, and recently discovered their URL rewrite rules: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html. This lets me automatically rewrite urls so reddit automatically opens in "old" reddit and boost docs open with the latest version of boost. Really feels like this search engine was built for people like me.

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There's a Firefox addon that does that too [0]... and another one made specifically for old.reddit [1]

0. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/

1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

Add-ons are terrible because they fingerprint you.Javascript allows for sharing of addons names. Having this niche add-on coupled with your device and browser type, IP, timezone this gives unique fingerprint. This comes from someone who used to have 50+ Firefox add-ons.

Why does this matter?

Because people who really need the privacy can be identified. Ideally, you want to help them so that their browsing don’t stand out (so that their browsing and yours are virtually the same).

I mean, isn't the only way to go about that to be completely vanilla or do what the masses do, then? Because if you start blocking all these cookies, canvas, javascript, etc- won't your browser's fingerprint be even more unique since you'd be the only one who's traffic data would be incomplete?

you could also use user scrits and save on addons?

Can you elaborate more on how Javascript allows for sharing of addon names? I didn't know this and wasn't able to find any references on it.

"Plugins" like "This browser can natively view PDFs." are detectable via JavaScript. There's no way for a site to see Firefox add-ons.

it should be noted that this is different on Chrome https://browserleaks.com/chrome

unfortunately, your fingerprint is more than likely unique either way: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Also a happy customer, but I didn't know about that feature. That's quite useful; thanks for mentioning it.

Wow, thanks for sharing the tip!

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