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Comment by bentt | Hacker News Reader

I have one browser (Chrome) where I have logged into Facebook/Insta/Oculus/Meta and one where I have never logged into them (Brave with Shields UP). I'd like to think that gives me some protection from tracking in the clean browser. Am I naïve?

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You are. Compare the fingerprints of your two browsers: https://amiunique.org, https://coveryourtracks.eff.org. Very likely, the fingerprints are very similar. For anonymity, use Tor.

If I don't want to use tor, but just reduce fingerprinting, is there a solution that wouldn't depend on extensions but use the features from a regular browser?

Firefox could limit the fonts and the resolution it reports to "usual" values, then upscale/downscale as needed.

Firefox offers tab sandbox/isolation so you don't need to do this. It's becoming standard elsewhere. You'll want to start isolating everything eventually. Gmail, shopping sites, etc.

Last I checked, Firefox no longer offers the Facebook container feature on fresh install. It was a hidden feature I had to go into about:config to set up... :(

You can have the most tricked-out, up-to-date protections on your client, or in a proxy between your client and a web site...and if that site is using server-to-server tracking they can get around it.

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2041148702652965?id=8...

I regularly get my ads and social algorithms injected with topics that I have no relation to, except other people in my household are deeply into them.

Like pet reptiles related products while my kid was doing prior research before pitching us on raising one.

The bigger companies definitely cross reference access from different users/devices/browsers.

Probably protects you against a decent amount of tracking, but there are numerous markers still that don’t even rely on cookies, and when used together can be correlated back to your profile. For instance, IP address, user agent OS string, timezone, hardware capabilities via the browser, etc.

They do something called browser fingerprinting and look at things like resolution, feature support, os, window size, ip address, and a hundred other things, and make a best guess

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