I checked it out but it’s still very buggy. And I couldn’t figure out how to disable first-party cookies. And also they proclaim that basically they don’t bother with fingerprinting resistance because it’s impossible to block , which is simply untrue.
Sorry I tried to link directly to the highlight but that feature is not supported in Orion:
it is literally impossible to prevent fingerprinting from a sophisticated fingerprinter if one is ever allowed to run.
Certain facets of fingerprinting are impossible to block but fingerprinting uses a hundred data points and randomizing just a few of them can be enough to throw it off, and this is what private browsers do.
Instead of removing or modifying browser differences, or adding troublesome permission prompts, the Brave browser will start adding subtle randomization to some fingerprinting endpoints. This privacy-through-randomization approach has been studied by privacy-focused computer scientists, most recently in the PriVaricator (Nikiforakis et al, WWW 2015) and FPRandom (Laperdrix et al, ESSoS 2017) projects. This is the first time those approaches are implemented in a mainstream browser.
This approach is fundamentally different from existing fingerprinting defense approaches; current approaches attempt to make all browsers look identical to websites (an impossible goal). Brave’s new approach aims to make every browser look completely unique, both between websites and between browsing sessions. By making your browser constantly appear different when browsing, websites are unable to link your browsing behavior, and are thus unable to track you on the Web.
They say it here, but I disagree. Fingerprinting is difficult to prevent but not impossible. Same thing as with malware: You’ll never be 100% protected from malware, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions against it, does it?
Here’s one way of testing how unique your fingerprint is.
I checked it out but it’s still very buggy. And I couldn’t figure out how to disable first-party cookies. And also they proclaim that basically they don’t bother with fingerprinting resistance because it’s impossible to block , which is simply untrue.
Where on that page do they claim that?
I am a dev (unrelated to this) and I do think it is impossible, on what grounds do you think it isn’t?
Sorry I tried to link directly to the highlight but that feature is not supported in Orion:
Certain facets of fingerprinting are impossible to block but fingerprinting uses a hundred data points and randomizing just a few of them can be enough to throw it off, and this is what private browsers do.
https://brave.com/privacy-updates/3-fingerprint-randomization/
They say it here, but I disagree. Fingerprinting is difficult to prevent but not impossible. Same thing as with malware: You’ll never be 100% protected from malware, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions against it, does it?
Here’s one way of testing how unique your fingerprint is.
Never said we should not try, nor that it was pointless.
I just said it was impossible to avoid, but I agree we should not make it effortless
One way of helping would be to tell people how to mitigate it. Telling them it’s impossible does the exact opposite.
You are the one claiming it’s possible, so you should be the one providing mitigation advice.
The EFF provides pretty sound advice, see the 2nd link in my initial comment.