Technology

So, manifest v3 was all about preventing Google's competitors from tracking you so that Google could forge ahead.

Would it be possible for a browser or extension to just provide false metadata in order to subvert this type of fingerprinting?

This has been the case for years. I develop fingerprinting services so AMA but it's basically a long lost battle and browser are beyond the point of saving without a major resolution taking place.

The only way to resist effective fingerprint is to disable Javascript in its entirity and use a shared connection pool like wireguard VPN or TOR. Period. Nothing else works.

Just in time for their prophet, Curtis Yarvin, to be pushing a full-scale surveillance state!

Googlers aren't on our side. They want to rule. They think being a fucking admin on a server makes them cut out to run society.

They want to tear down democracy and basically replace it with administrator rules and access control lists.

So I thought this is never going to fly under GDPR. Then the article goes on to say:

Many privacy laws, including the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA, require user consent for tracking. However, because fingerprinting works without explicit storage of user data on a device, companies may argue that existing laws do not apply which creates a legal gray area that benefits advertisers over consumers.

Oh come on Google, seriously? I remember a time when Google were the good guys, can't believe how they've changed...

Yeah, I have an anti fingerprint extension installed in Firefox, and immediately no Google site will work anymore, all google sessions break with it while most other sites just continue to work.

I'm working to rid myself completely from Google, my target being that I will completely DNS block all google (and Microsoft and Facebook) domains within a year or so. Wish I could do it faster but I only have a few hours per weekend for this

Which is why I had hoped the EU would ban all forms of fingerprinting and non-essential data tracking. But they somehow got lobbied into selecting cookies as the only possible mechanism that can be used, leaving ample room to track using other methods.

Further evidence that a Republican government in the USA results in private organisations pushing the bar as far as they can.

In Reagan's time it was Wall Street. Now it's Silicon Valley.

You want private organisations working for your benefit and not that of their shareholders? You need a government that actually has the gumption to challenge them. The current US government is 4 years of a surrender flag flying on the white house.

Or we could bin off this fucking failed neoliberal experiment, but that's apparently a bit controversial for far too many people

https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/biggest-privacy-erosion-in-10-years-on-googles-policy-change-towards-fingerprinting/

This article actually shares what changed, as opposed to just asserting that there was a change.

I go to pornhub every morning to check out the articles. Lately I've noticed that they have exactly the kind of articles I'm interested in always at the top two rows and then a bunch of stuff I'm not really into elsewhere. They are definitely testing stuff.

It would be nice to hammer a manually created fingerprint into the browser and share that fingerprint around. When everyone has the same fingerprint, no one can be uniquely identified. Could we make such a thing possible?

Digital fingerprinting is a method of data collection – one that in the past has been refused by Google itself because it “subverts user choice and is wrong.” But, we all remember that Google removed “Don’t be evil” from its Code of Conduct in 2018. Now, the Silicon Valley tech giant has taken the next step by introducing digital fingerprinting.

Oh, forgot to mention - we're evil now. Ha! Okay, into the chutes.

Google can't fingerprint you very well if you block all scripts from Google.

Time for meshnet?

new? isn't this at least like a decade old method of tracking?

We need Richard Hendricks and his new internet asap

You'd THINK the article would link to a source about the fingerprinting in question instead of 90% filler slop and ads for their own service... Anyone got a link?

But why would any browser accept access to those metadata so freely? I get that programming languages can find out about the environment they are operating in, but why would a browser agree to something like reading installed fonts or extensions without asking the user first? I understand why Chrome does this, but all of the mayor ones and even Firefox?

Using Mullvad Browser + Mullvad VPN could mitigate this a little bit. Because if you use it as intended (don’t modify Mullvad browser after installation) , all Mullvad users would have the same browser fingerprint and IPs from the same pool.

Great read from Tuta on thia topic. It's been an issue for a while but Google going full force publicly on it causes this issue to grow greater.

I left a comment replying to someone further down about how this can be at least a little combatted and how it is with browsers. (At least to my minimal knowledge of it)