Ad blockers focus on ads, not fingerprinting.
“uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory-efficient wide-spectrum content blocker for Chromium and Firefox. It blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups, annoying anti-blockers, malware sites, etc., by default using EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's Blocklist, Online Malicious URL Blocklist, and uBO filter lists. There are many other lists available to block even more [...]
Ads, "unintrusive" or not, are just the visible portion of the privacy-invading means entering your browser when you visit most sites. uBO's primary goal is to help users neutralize these privacy-invading methods in a way that welcomes those users who do not wish to use more technical means.”
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock?tab=readme-ov-file#ublock-...
What a silly complaint. How is an ad blocker supposed to work if it can't read and change the data on a website?
You might as well complain that your Camera app wants access to your camera.
> I currently use no extensions to keep my security posture high.
Ironically, skipping uBlock Origin because of the security concern is lessening your security posture. Are you familiar with the term "malvertising"?
Ublock is great, but I am finding fingerprinting that gets past it and that's what I'm referring to.
Which is concerning. Until you realise I do the same thing a few days later and I'm still unique.
It is not telling you that the test site has never seen you before, because the eff isn't storing your fingerprint for later analysis and tracking
It could actually tell you about which real tracking vendors are showing you as "Seen and tracked" so it's pretty annoying they don't do that.
If that site shows you as having a unique fingerprint, I guarantee you are being tracked across the web. I've seen the actual systems in usage, not the sales pitch. I've seen how effective these tools are, and I haven't even gotten a look at what Google or Facebook have internally. Even no name vendors that don't own the internet can easily track you across any site that integrates with them.
The fingerprint is just a set of signals that tracking providers are using to follow you across the internet. It's per machine for the most part, but if you have ever purchased something on the internet, some of the providers involved will have information like your name.
Here is what Google asks ecommerce platforms to send them as part of a Fraud Prevention integration using Recaptcha:
https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/reference/rest/...
If it doesn't store the fingerprints then how does it tell the difference between
5 identical looking browsers connecting from 5 different IPs
1 browser connecting 5 times from 5 different IPs
Yes they are, quoting that very page:
> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 312,935 tested in the past 45 days
So clearly they store the information for at least 45 days. This raises the question what they actually mean by unique. If I change my IP and re-test, I get the same
> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 312,941 tested in the past 45 days
So does that mean that my fingerprint changed, and they can't track me anymore? Or do they mean to tell me that they still track me and I'm still as uniquely identified.
Their methodology and linked articles does not seem to answer this [0] [1]
It's all very complicated, because the fingerprinting needs to be unique enough to identify you while still being "persistent" enough not to identify you as somebody else if you change just one bit of it.
[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-the...
I thought uBlock Origin was now dead in Chrome?
I remember a few hacks to keep it going but have now migrated to Firefox (or sometimes Edge…) to keep using it.
--disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2UnsupportedBut turning on privacy.resistfingerprinting in about:config (or was it fingerprintingProtection?) would break things randomly (like 3D maps on google for me. maybe it's related to canvas API stuff?) and made it hard to remember why things weren't working.
Not really sure how to strike a balance of broad convenience vs effectiveness these days. Every additional hoop is more attrition.