Fingerprinting protection
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Hi, guys! I would like to ask the Vivaldi team to think about implementing a mobile browser protection against fingerprint tracking. For the PC version, this is easily accomplished with extensions such as Canvas Fingerprint Defender, Font Fingerprint Defender, WebGL Fingerprint Defender, AudioContext Fingerprint Defender.
This is quite important, since it is unlikely that we will see support for extensions in the next versions of Vivaldi, but without protection against digital fingerprints, the browser can hardly be called completely private.
Here is a similar theme for the PC, but I did not find it for the mobile version. I apologize to the moderators if I searched badly.
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@tverye This is a good suggestion - mobile users are allowed to request as much protection as desktop users, so it is good to post a feature request here alongside the existing ones for desktop.
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@LonM said in Fingerprinting protection:
mobile users deserve as much protection as desktop users
Well to nit-pick, if this suggestion is implemented, it would give mobile users superior protection to desktop users, given that without extensions & despite various others & moi asking for native HTML5 Canvas Fingerprinting blocking for years, desktop still lacks it. Having to gain this functionality via an extension is of course not quite the stated Vivaldi ethos, but needs must.
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@Steffie Yeah, maybe my earlier reply was not the clearest. I meant more that mobile users should be allowed to request this just as much as desktop users.
For any other interested parties, here is the relevant desktop request: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/29011/browser-fingerprinting-protection
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This is quote from reddit.
*As for why they are trying to fingerprint your browser: advertising. It's very helpful to know who you are as you move from site to site so they can learn more about you and target ads better. There are other reasons like various scams or identity theft or whatever, but it's mostly just spying on you.As for how: your browser sometimes may identify you specifically on purpose through cookies that help keep you logged in or remember where you were on a page.
In other cases, it identifies your system (os, browser version, etc) so that websites can give you a version of the site that works best on your setup. Even though there are standards for how to interact with a browser, they don't always follow the standard or they might have new features that aren't standardized yet.
Even when your browser tries not to send any information about you (privacy settings or privacy oriented browsers), it's often still possible to track you. This is because there are always little differences that can be detected. Maybe a timer works a little different, maybe an illegal instruction breaks one browser but not another, maybe the format of a certain answer is slightly different between different systems. Never underestimate the creativity of hackers, it's truly mind blowing the little things they can find to break even the most careful systems. In the end, it's an arms race like any other type of cyber security. Browsers try to hide differences, hackers find new ways to identify them and around and around they go.*
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I hope the rules don't prohibit bringing up a topic once a year?
I still hope that fingerprint tracking protection will appear at least in a basic form in this year, as well as support for blocking cname in the adblocker.I think vivaldi has an awesome user interface, but it should to do small steps to take out of the box privacy as well as Brave and Firefox do too, especially since there is almost no trusted anti-fingerprint extension in the Chrome extension store. Of the open source extension I know only "Trace", but in any case it does not pass a third-party security audit, so I would like to have a secure solution from the browser developers so as not to risk anything.
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This would be a great feature -- along with something like Container Tabs (à la Firefox) this would make Vivaldi reign supreme in all areas, not just customizability.
Firefox claims to have fingerprint protection (not enabled by default) but a Panopticlick test right now indicates that a fresh install with no add-ons and fingerprint protection enabled still results in a unique browser fingerprint among 285,000 tested in the last 45 days.
The Brave browser comes with fingerprinting protection enabled by default, and a similar Panopticlick test returned that the fingerprint was randomized and not unique.
Below: Brave browser's fingerprint protection. Can Vivaldi implement something similar so we can have top notch privacy and top not customization?
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I don't understand why the browser is not private for such a long period of time?
it seems to me that some developers receive salaries from large corporations and they do not implement surveillance to display ads.
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@tverye I second the request
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Are you really ignoring user's privacy?
Why don't you implement anti fingerprinting for the mobile version of Vivaldi? If it's for technical reasons please explain it. It may help to understand the development decision. -
@AnastasiaVi said in Fingerprinting protection:
it seems to me that some developers receive salaries from large corporations and they do not implement surveillance to display ads.
The way Vivaldi gets money is cleared stated: search engine promotion, browser in cars and predefined bookmarks. It is very sustainable non privacy invasive way for financing a browser. You claim seems to have no basis whatsoever, so I immediately reject your supposition and may ask for evidence of what you said, in other way, it can only be called a conspiracy theory.
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@jochen01 said in Fingerprinting protection:
Are you really ignoring user's privacy?
Why don't you implement anti fingerprinting for the mobile version of Vivaldi? If it's for technical reasons please explain it. It may help to understand the development decision.Achieving a good fingerprint protection scheme isn't so easy. If you want to avoid fingerprinting all together use Tor. At what cost?: no extensions, slow navigation, no tools, no interface personalization. So yes: fingerprint protection can not be so easy to implement in such a feature rich browser. It doesn't mean is impossible, it means that the focus is in other more requested things. It doesn't mean that Vivaldi is ignoring user privacy, but focusing on other aspects of it.
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@uyx said in Fingerprinting protection:
If you want to avoid fingerprinting all together use Tor.
I assume that you know how wrong you are.
TOR is MUCH MORE than just avoiding fingerprinting.
I understand that it's your decision not to fix fingerprint protection. Thank you for clarification. And yes, I am using TOR as an alternative browser if privacy is essential. -
@jochen01 said in Fingerprinting protection:
@uyx said in Fingerprinting protection:
If you want to avoid fingerprinting all together use Tor.
I assume that you know how wrong you are.
TOR is MUCH MORE than just avoiding fingerprinting.
I understand that it's your decision not to fix fingerprint protection. Thank you for clarification. And yes, I am using TOR as an alternative browser if privacy is essential.Sorry, I never said the only thing Tor can do is avoid fingerprinting, so I don't know to what claim you said I was wrong (????) Btw you can also use it as your default browser if you want to.
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@uyx Seems to be a misunderstanding.
You: If you want to avoid fingerprinting all together use Tor.
Me: TOR does much more than avoiding fingerprinting. Your answer reads as: "if you want to avoid fingerprinting, you have to live with slow network performance."But I have understood: You don't want to avoid fingerprinting vivaldi instances. It took a while until you made a clear statement. BTW: You are member of the development team? That's a statement of the development team? I would just like this to be made clear
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Hi,
IDK how good is this, but maybe does somethingchrome://flags/#enable-fingerprinting-protection-blocklist
