Brower Data - Why are they not doing more?
from Squizzy@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 11 May 00:45
https://lemmy.world/post/46679774
from Squizzy@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 11 May 00:45
https://lemmy.world/post/46679774
Apple wont give gyro data but firefox will, firefox wont give battery data but chrome will. Everyone gives screen size and density data.
Why are these data points not discussed with privacy?
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Advertisers need to be able to fingerprint you based on a combined measurement of the metrics you speak of. They aren’t interested in you per se, but you as a statistic, they are very interested in.
Advertisers are willing to pay more for accurate data.
Removing enough of these metrics to muddle the fingerprinting process would be bad business for everyone, so they all ride the line of privacy vs. profitability hoping we don’t notice.
I mean, that’s what I just came up with in my head in the moment anyways.
Now, off to forget I ever posted this!!
I don’t have a good answer, but I wonder the same and about the technical reasons why, if some websites require such data, the browser can’t just lie and touch up rendering in post to fit whatever unique window size I have. AFAIK, uBlock already does some of its own CSS touch-up so there aren’t awkward gaps where ads once were.
Of the browsers I’ve tried out, the Cromite project goes furthest to mitigate and obfuscate the data it hands out, but in their words, it’s still not comprehensive.
Cromite sounds nice. Well, aside the fact users stand out from the rest because of using a exotic browser. But nonetheless that seems like i should give it a try.
There have been good writeups on why Apple doesn’t provide gyro data — it can be used to physically track people. This is mostly an issue in apps that embed Safari, such as a store loyalty app that can track your movement while you’re in their store — or in a competitor’s store. Since Firefox isn’t embedded in apps, it’s not an issue there.
Please elaborate on why that’s not an issue with Firefox?
A site getting my physical position is creepy to say the least, I don’t want to have entire behaviour profiles built for me based on such data, not to mention that any unnecessary exposed data helps fingerprint us across the internet.
Am I missing something?
Its crazy, the accurately deduced I was sitting browsing because of the gyro. Combine with location/time and all their data they likely know all of us individually at this point?
OP is referring to specifically tracking in apps. Yes Firefox gives gyro data, but apps have no access to it, only web sites do. Safari can be embedded in apps and thus they can get gyro data. Websites have less system permissions than apps (run in background etc) and you’d be using a store app for example while shopping, they’d be able to track that data more than a web site would.
Can you provide one or elaborate on it?
Embedded developers have tried all manner or wizardry to simply track speed, not even position based just on an accelerometer/gyro, but the sample rate error drift is so large that putting a GPS module in there is 100x more accurate for deriving speed.
I would be interested to see how a browser, which almost certainly doesn’t get the full serialized data, is able to track just based on that which the wearables industry have been trying for decades with bad results.
What makes you think they aren’t?
I participated to W3C workshops and privacy data was definitely part of most if not all discussions.
That being said each browser vendor have their own strategy and opinion based on their business model and culture.
Because firefox give gyro data and there is no reason to. Same with screen density.
Literally posted a suggestion yesterday for a sport project to use developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/…/Accelerometer so I definitely see reasons. It might be better with a permission prompt first but still it’s not without reason.
I suppose this is the other side of the I dont want an app for everything view.
Indeed, I try to have as little apps as possible… because I don’t trust them.
Now that I mostly rely on F-Droid it’s a bit different but my default behavior when I have to use an app is “Oh no… you’re going to siphon all my data in exchange for mediocre service I’ll still have to pay for” whereas I trust my browser a lot more.
I spent ages trying to find a pv installer that uses eu parts and ended up with a shite chinese app that has installer access with more options than me
I mean, why do they need to report screen resolution to JS? If you don’t use JS for things you shouldn’t, you don’t need that data point.
Or at least make it rough data only. Or ratio data. “Window has 4:3 ratio” done.
I think there are a few valid reasons. I made a page for my friends for some videos of their adopted puppy they wanted to share. Absolutely ZERO trackers, ZERO fingerprinters. Just oldschool pre-enshittification web page. But CSS wasn’t enough to dynamically switch the vdieo res when windows were resized, without losing current playback spot. It needed a little JS. Not much! Tiny and you could just look to see it did nothign bad.
Prob is, abuses by Big Evil Tech now overwhelm non-shitty uses. And we’re left with a completely enshittified web. Full of fingerprinters and trackers and web bugs. Inescapable surveilence b/c they abuse every possible signal to track ppl.
This is why we cannot have nice things.
I have no answer to your question, but if you’re looking for alternatives, hardened Firefox forks such as LibreWolf, Fennec, IronFox etc all have varying degrees of anti-fingerprinting features. I know for sure that Fennec withholds battery and gyro data, but gives timezone data, while IronFox can spoof the latter with a toggle and reports a spoofed screen size
edited
I must try these, the only one I found was fennec, it did give accurate gyro information.
Weird, my Fennec must’ve had additional configurations I forgot about since it didn’t give out that info. I uninstalled it for IronFox so I can’t check it! I mentioned LibreWolf but that’s on desktop, so no gyro info there
I wonder what else the desktkps see. Where do you get ironfox?
IronFox from here:
github.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
desktop should “leak” more or less the same data, I think
Balls, it wont install “couldnt find a suitable release”
I installed it by adding their repo to F-droid and it worked, try that
They’re actually being discussed, but more by experts with other experts, in groups of researchers, etc.
The general privacy advocate often times lacks the deep technical understanding.
I lack all sorts of understanding. I want it all to work perfect and be private, I am the illiterate consumer.
if you were the illiterate consumer you would be scrolling slop on youtube instead of asking questions like this here
Appreciate you 🫡