this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
273 points (94.2% liked)

Firefox

17829 readers
185 users here now

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

27 addons? Might as well disable Resist Fingerprinting, then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I know what you're saying, because having that many addons makes them unique, but doesn't resist fingerprinting still help somewhat?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It does a few things here and there that can still be useful, true.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

In my understanding, a website should only be able to detect addons if they directly change the website in any way, eg. the css or html. So let's just go through the list and check:

  • Augmented Steam: Only affects steam, where I'm logged in anyway.
  • Auto replay for YouTube: I'm logged in anyway, and mostly use some piped instance.
  • Buster: Captcha Solver: I guess it just uses JavaScript to click whatever it needs to. And if changes would be detected, the captcha would probably not let me through anyway.
  • Clean twitter: I don't use twitter. Yeet.
  • Dark reader: This is probably one of the only extensions actually changing the website significantly. So I'm one of a million users, if we assume my user agent is real.
  • DeArrow: Again, only YouTube.
  • Defund Wikipedia: I'm honestly not concerned about Wikipedia fingerprinting me.
  • Disable Youtube seek my numbers: You know the drill.
  • DDG privacy essentials: 1.6 million users, and I would be surprised if an extension designed to protect from fingerprinting is easily fingerprintable itself.
  • I don't care about cookies: (Because I block them anyway) Also just simulates clicking.
  • Kagi search: Just adds a new menu and changes the default search engine.
  • Karrinator: Only changes the name of a German politician. And I basically never see her name anyway, and if so either only on Lemmy, (reputable) Newspapers or the official website of the German Government. They have my fingerprint anyway, and it's the only definition they know.
  • KeePassXC: Again, only inserts and clicks.
  • NoScript: Is ironically probably the best way to fingerprint, if it's configured incorrectly and a fingerprinting script is still allowed.
  • Return Youtube Dislike: You know.
  • Shortkeys: Browser only.
  • Simple Tab Groups: Browser only.
  • Simple modify headers: Should not change anything that would be possible for the website to check, and is only activated for discord anyway.
  • SponsorBlock: Youtube again.
  • Tampermonkey: Only has one script for discord.
  • uBlock: Should block fingerprinting, or the main use of it, but even if not its behavior is probably very similar to other AdBlockers and there are more than 7 million users (just on FF).
  • UnloadTabs: Browser only.
  • User-Agent Switcher and Manager: Should not be transparent to websites.
  • Vencord Web: Now absolete as it was dicontinued for FF natively. Yeet. It's a Tampermonkey script now, and only active on discord.
  • Video DownloadHelper: Should only read contents, and only if I want it to. yt-dlp is often better anyway.