this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
120 points (96.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43821 readers
884 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There is a theory that travel websites use trackers and other information readily available about your device and browser to advertise different prices to different people. A lot of VPN companies use this in their marketing actually— showing different prices for the same airline tickets depending on which VPN server you’re connected to in the world.
I haven’t done much research on this personally, but you may be able to see it in action by opening the same site in a normal and an incognito window and searching for a flight/hotel. Or trying the aforementioned VPN trick. There however doesn’t seem to be any specific rhyme or reason for it, and no one can say that XYZ browser connected to ABC server will get you the cheapest prices. There are just way too many variables in play and these kinds of algorithms the websites use are all well-guarded secrets.
You’re right- theory probably wasn’t the best word. It is known that companies do this but it’s impossible to concretely say how and in what circumstances prices change.
VPN won't protect from browser finger printing.
It is just a part of a OpSec set up
Explain
https://amiunique.org/
Holy fuck Javascript is a cancer.
So if I understand correctly, its just the unique cocktail of settings and OS identifiers that mark your print?
So keeoing things default should mask you to some degree, right?
Try it. Put whatever settings you want to default and rerun the scan.
Hooray, I am unique! Oh wait...
If you don't use hardened browser, you leave a trail that uqniue enough to ID you across web.
Facebook and google have scrypts monitoring your moves on most of the websites.
They sell this info
An uncommon browser setup is also distinctive, though. One thing to do is use something like NoScript to not allow FB, Google etc to run scripts on pages. But how many people do that, like 1%? So it's another data point.
No doubt it has huge benefit as does unlock
Using a few different browser for different uses cases will limit data point and keep clean profiles.
So there is that.
No easy way to do it.
Hardened browser being what, like tor? Cause I thought tor functioned somewhat similarly to a vpn.
Firefox needs to be configured.
Librewolf works
Mullvad browser too
Maybe brave
Tor too limiting for daily use
Do I need addons to do this for firefox, or is it some settings I need to fiddle with?
Not to out my browser lol
If you want to harden Firefox, use ffprofile.com. It makes creating a custom profile very easy, and it should have good defaults. This should provide you with decent privacy and also allows you to remove annoyances like sponsored sites.
Or if you are lazy, use LibreWolf which, as far as I know, basically does just that, but preconfigured for you.
For addons, I would go with: uBlock Origin, CanvasBlocker, Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes.
Finally you can test your setup with Panopticlick.
Deff will need a cocktail of extension.
Ublock privacy badger noscrypt
But people do different combos depending on their needs
However each one makes you make unique, so back got he same problem so can't load up too much nor is it needed.
Can you not set up to change the requested data each time you change sites? Or some other way of altering the print such that you arent the same print each time?
I don't sufficient expertise to answer that tbh
I just know to reduce parameters to limit ability to track. How mechanics would actually work is mystery to me lol
doing my part.jpeg
Any level of answer is appreciated, I hadnt realized I was this detailed trackable without what you commented so far
You should consider switching your user agent. It is often used to track and identify you, by sending stuff like OS and browser version.
You can find a better explanation, and your current user agent here: https://whatmyuseragent.com/