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Comment by mnw21cam | Hacker News Reader

It has always rather irked me that seemingly the only way to stop people from datamining you is to give them more information. Many web pages even specifically complain about third party cookies being disabled in the web browser, saying that they can't possibly honour my preference unless I switch it back on again.

I'd much rather just not hand out the information in the first place.

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There needs to be a mechanism to tweak the signal-to-noise ratio. Either 1) stop interact with them and send 0 signal, or 2) have a browser plugin that just provides random interaction on a webpage and increase the the noise. The expensive targeting machines they've built become much less useful.

AdNauseam is a Firefox extension which clicks ads automatically.

While that seems like a fun idea, I'm not a fan of the permissions the extension requires.

It seems sketchy at first glance, but then you pair that with what the addon is actually doing:

- Access your data for all websites (anything that interacts with ads, including blockers, will need this)

- Download files and read and modify the browser’s download history (these two items are single entitlement in firefox, and provides the ability for AN to store the images for ads it clicks on. You get this nice mosaic view of all the ads its clicked, as well as a running total how much click revenue you've burned)

- Monitor extension usage and manage themes (checks if any other incompatible ad blockers installed and notifies the users)

- Access browser tabs (I'm not 100% sure what this one does, but you've already given it full access to everything on every page anyways.)

- Access browser activity during navigation (Killing popups)

The addon itself is GPL3, so I think there's a very low likelihood of shenanigans here. Also compare and contrast with uBlock Origin:

- Access your data for all websites

- Read and modify privacy settings

- Access browser tabs

- Access browser activity during navigation

Mozilla screams bloody murder about security and careless users, but then forces you to choose between "no extensions" and "extensions with unlimited permissions to see everything you do".

I've been told that without more people doing it, fuzzing your browser like that makes you more identifiable. Know if that's true?

Think of it like fingerprints (it is actually called fingerprinting). Every unique setting you make is a point that could identify you, even settings supposedly intended to increase your privacy. Much like adding a big burn mark to your fingerprint to actual fingerprint to mask its curves, now that big burn mark could be used to identify you even more than the original curves could.

I'm always surprised at how pervasive this is. Most frequently, I see it where you describe - with sites demanding that I sign in/up and disable all tracking prevention before they'll make even a basic effort to let me disable tracking.

But one of the ugliest cases is DMCA takedowns. For big companies, they're quick and easy and usually succeed even when they're completely unjustified. But for unincorporated people, issuing the takedown means providing your name and other personal information to the hosting site. And given that DMCA takedowns are the most efficient way to handle things like sketchy sites hosting stolen nude photos, it's basically a requirement to furnish them with the identity of the person pictured...

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