• WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You don’t want a randomised fingerprint, as that is relatively unique among a sea of fingerprints [1]. What you want is a fingerprint that’s as similar to everyone else (generic) as possible; that’s what Firefox’s resist fingerprinting setting aims to do, and what the Tor browser does.

    [1] There are many values you can’t change, so the randomisation of the ones you can change could end up making you more unique … think of it like having your language set to french but are based in the USA — that language setting can’t uniquely identify the French in france, but will stick out like a sore thumb if set in shitsville Idaho. It’s likely the same if you use firefox but have your user agent set to chrome; that’s more rare and unique than not changing the user agent at all.

    • Rez@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      But isn’t randomization supposed to give you a different unique fingerprint each time? So yes, you would be unique and easily tracked but only until your fingerprint changes

        • random65837@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          That was addressed above, you ever see “identical” twins? They look exactly the same if you see then once, twice, 3 times, but if you see both of them constantly, you’ll start seeing the small difference in them and then be able to identify who’s who. Same exact thing.

        • virtualbriefcase@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          I don’t think there is any proven results, but I think the reason the EFF prefers Braves decision is the philosophy that there are so many data points that it could be possible to link you to it using the ones not standardized by anti fingerprinting.

          Like ways to incorrectly describe someone. One describes a guy correctly but generically. One describes a guy with a lot of detail but the wrong race and two feet too short.