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Comment by flutas | Hacker News Reader

> Someone should also look into the "navigator" variable that websites can access. It provides a strangely open look into the user's machine. For example, it allows websites to know about your OS, your CPU and your memory.

Looks like it's full of red herring values to me, at least Chrome 107 on a (M1) MBP. That being said, it's always good to remove anything that can be used to fingerprint a user.

It reported the following...

- CPU as undefined

- Memory as 8GB (32GB in actuality)

- Platform as MacIntel (Should be Mac-AArch64)

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For me on various browsers:

    Firefox:
        CPU: Windows NT 10
        Memory: undefinedGB
        Screen: 2560x1440

    Brave:
        CPU: undefined
        Memory: 0.5GB
        Screen: 2560x1440

    Edge:
        CPU: undefined
        Memory: 8GB
        Screen: 2560x1440

Actual values: Windows 10, 128GB, 3820x2160

That's a crapton of RAM, but are you running on a scaled display? Specifically at 150% scaling?

Ah, yes on the scaling

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s showing logical pixels, not physical pixels then. Mine as also showing the value you’d get for adjusting based on scaling.

The combination of your "CPU as undefined, Memory as 8GB, Platform as MacIntel" can still be used to fingerprint you. Independent of whether the values represent your actual hardware or not.

And they are probably not even red herrings. undefind CPU simply means you use a certain type of browser that does not provide this value. 8GB memory probably means "8GB or more". MacIntel might simply be interpreted as "Some Mac".

Interesting. Running this in Firefox on my M1 MBP, I get the following results:

  CPU: "Intel Mac OS X 10.15"
  Memory: undefined  
  Screen: 1512x982

The CPU result is doubly incorrect, since a) it's not an Intel chip, and b) i'm running 12.5.1 instead of 10.15.

The screen value is correct if you double it, i guess this is measured in points instead of pixels...

> The CPU result is doubly incorrect, since a) it's not an Intel chip, and b) i'm running 12.5.1 instead of 10.15.

It looks like you've enabled resistfingerprinting?

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/eddb810ffd5499f098...

same for me. It only guessed screen resolution correctly

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