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Website detects whether you have LaTeX installed [among many other things] (kuber.studio)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ca
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[–] [S] 15 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

Good old times... Unfortunately, as that website points out, it doesn't really matter if it detects incorrect values: for fingerprinting it's sufficient that the values be "consistent* through visits, even if wrong.

I'm not sure whether it needs JavaScript to read the values? I'd like to know.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    If it reports the same values for everyone, or randomizes them every start (like display resolution and timezone), then it becomes less useful for fingerprinting. In fact, it calculated a different fingerprint altogether this time, though it did know it was the second time I visited.

    I’m not sure whether it needs JavaScript to read the values? I’d like to know.

    Yeah no, it actually will need JS for most of that information. Otherwise the server will just get the HTTP request header which includes your browser's user-agent and some other less identifying stuff, plus maybe your IP (unless you're behind a VPN).

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago

    Yeah no, it actually will need JS for most of that information.

    99% of the Internet doesn't work without JS. Yes, having a script blocker that blocks google static & whatever else will help you some, but it's not perfect & this type of script blocking specifically is under heavy attack right now.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 week ago

    Thanks for the useful info! Indeed randomizers are good. But as you wrote, it's sad that so many sites just don't work, or work badly if one alters some of those values...

    Maybe the long-distance future of sane people will be I2P or similar infrastructures...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    Letterboxing could help here making consistency a bit more random by setting each websites height/width to different values. Mullvad-browser does this by default. I think on other FF forks you have to turn it on in about:config.

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