Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomassmith65 | Hacker News Reader

The article is about Google's new focus on tracking users via device fingerprint, instead of (primarily) via cookies.

Which is, depending on your perspective, either terrifying or just stupid.

Right now anti-fingerprinting security is not very high on anyone's minds, but remember that your digital fingerprints follow you EVERYWHERE. You can't turn them off or disable them on your side like cookies.

It's sort of like the wholesale elimination of privacy as a concept, you might say.

But hence the stupidity! It's too bold a move not to elicit a reaction from developers and users (who have the power to discover just how many bits of information they are leaking about themselves using tools like https://pbtest.org/).

So on one hand I can have websites that offer richer functionality by being aware of my time zone and locally installed fonts, or on the other hand I can have privacy. Hmm, which is worth more?

It's unfortunate that the pbtest.org tool links out to a service with an expired cert.

Alternative:

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 183,020 tested in the past 45 days.

Damn how is this possible when I'm using a stock iPhone? I look at the characteristics and apart from timezone and language, how can they tell the same model iPhone apart?

Have you looked at the detailed breakdown that they give you?

It Tells me it’s unique despite we visit two weeks ago.

TIL about Web Audio, an API that allows any web page to find out about the user's sound setup (e.g. channel count and some kind of transfer function of the audio subsystem?) despite there being no legitimate purpose for that.

Is it really a surprise it gets implemented when all browser development outside of Webkit is financed by Google Ads revenue?

certs are not necessary, they are a tradeoff

> but remember that your digital fingerprints follow you EVERYWHERE. You can't turn them off or disable them on your side like cookies.

I'm honestly curious, if you don't mind clarifying a bit more. How do your digital fingerprints follow you everywhere without your being able to erase them? This thread goes into device fingerprinting, but if one rigorously changes devices and certain use/account practices, how can they still be tracked so totally?

> if one rigorously changes devices and certain use/account practices

Your account practices will need to include only using an account on one device. Every time you use an account that identifies you on a device, that device can be associated to you; at that point its fingerprint is your fingerprint. Rotating devices faster just adds more devices to your identity.

Tor browser asks you if you want to allow fingerprinting or not when a site attempts to query your HW info. Not sure why other browsers can't do the same.

The problem with Tor browser: You’re that guy with the Tor browser.

https://xkcd.com/1105/

This isn't new. Most advertising companies have had some sort of "Cross device targeting" or "household targeting" solution for going on almost a decade now. It's also why the suggestion of "repeal GDPR, just use cookie blockers" is so misguided.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com