Apple wont give gyro data but firefox will, firefox wont give battery data but chrome will. Everyone gives screen size and density data.
Why are these data points not discussed with privacy?
There have been good writeups on why Apple doesn’t provide gyro data — it can be used to physically track people. This is mostly an issue in apps that embed Safari, such as a store loyalty app that can track your movement while you’re in their store — or in a competitor’s store. Since Firefox isn’t embedded in apps, it’s not an issue there.
Can you provide one or elaborate on it?
Embedded developers have tried all manner or wizardry to simply track speed, not even position based just on an accelerometer/gyro, but the sample rate error drift is so large that putting a GPS module in there is 100x more accurate for deriving speed.
I would be interested to see how a browser, which almost certainly doesn’t get the full serialized data, is able to track just based on that which the wearables industry have been trying for decades with bad results.
I have no answer to your question, but if you’re looking for alternatives, hardened Firefox forks such as LibreWolf, Fennec, IronFox etc all have varying degrees of anti-fingerprinting features. I know for sure that Fennec withholds battery and gyro data, but gives timezone data, while IronFox can spoof the latter with a toggle and reports a spoofed screen size
edited
I must try these, the only one I found was fennec, it did give accurate gyro information.
Weird, my Fennec must’ve had additional configurations I forgot about since it didn’t give out that info. I uninstalled it for IronFox so I can’t check it! I mentioned LibreWolf but that’s on desktop, so no gyro info there
I wonder what else the desktkps see. Where do you get ironfox?
IronFox from here:
https://github.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
desktop should “leak” more or less the same data, I think
Balls, it wont install “couldnt find a suitable release”
I installed it by adding their repo to F-droid and it worked, try that
Advertisers need to be able to fingerprint you based on a combined measurement of the metrics you speak of. They aren’t interested in you per se, but you as a statistic, they are very interested in.
Advertisers are willing to pay more for accurate data.
Removing enough of these metrics to muddle the fingerprinting process would be bad business for everyone, so they all ride the line of privacy vs. profitability hoping we don’t notice.
I mean, that’s what I just came up with in my head in the moment anyways.
Now, off to forget I ever posted this!!
What makes you think they aren’t?
I participated to W3C workshops and privacy data was definitely part of most if not all discussions.
That being said each browser vendor have their own strategy and opinion based on their business model and culture.
Because firefox give gyro data and there is no reason to. Same with screen density.
Literally posted a suggestion yesterday for a sport project to use https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Accelerometer so I definitely see reasons. It might be better with a permission prompt first but still it’s not without reason.
I suppose this is the other side of the I dont want an app for everything view.
Indeed, I try to have as little apps as possible… because I don’t trust them.
Now that I mostly rely on F-Droid it’s a bit different but my default behavior when I have to use an app is “Oh no… you’re going to siphon all my data in exchange for mediocre service I’ll still have to pay for” whereas I trust my browser a lot more.
I spent ages trying to find a pv installer that uses eu parts and ended up with a shite chinese app that has installer access with more options than me
They’re actually being discussed, but more by experts with other experts, in groups of researchers, etc.
The general privacy advocate often times lacks the deep technical understanding.
I lack all sorts of understanding. I want it all to work perfect and be private, I am the illiterate consumer.
if you were the illiterate consumer you would be scrolling slop on youtube instead of asking questions like this here
Appreciate you 🫡
I don’t have a good answer, but I wonder the same and about the technical reasons why, if some websites require such data, the browser can’t just lie and touch up rendering in post to fit whatever unique window size I have. AFAIK, uBlock already does some of its own CSS touch-up so there aren’t awkward gaps where ads once were.
Of the browsers I’ve tried out, the Cromite project goes furthest to mitigate and obfuscate the data it hands out, but in their words, it’s still not comprehensive.
Cromite sounds nice. Well, aside the fact users stand out from the rest because of using a exotic browser. But nonetheless that seems like i should give it a try.
