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Dr. Brandon Wiley

@mcc Finding any usable web browser is getting increasingly complicated. I'm currently using Vivaldi, Safari, Opera, and DuckDuckGo Browser. However, sometimes I have to install Chromium temporarily on a separate machine because so many people have migrated their firmware updaters to only working with WebUSB, which seems to only actually work in Chromium-based browsers. I evaluate all the browsers with Little Snitch to see if they act shady when I'm not even loading any web pages.

12 July at 21:31 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.blanu.net
25 comments
mcc

@brandon I'm using Chrome on Windows because the featureset is better and using Firefox on Linux because the Linux version of Chrome is just too buggy. (Big blinking black rectangles in XWayland, etc.) I was going to switch to Firefox on Windows because of the "Manifest V3" thing. But now I guess I'm looking at… uh, Librewolf? Which I *assume* means probably I won't be able to use Tidal or Criterion Channel in a browser anymore.

12 July at 21:40 | Open on mastodon.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon Librewolf is alright, but I have had to keep a copy of Chromium (well, Ungoogled Chromium) around just for random pain-in-the-ass websites for that reason.

...most annoyingly Twitch. sigh

12 July at 23:19 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon You can turn off most of LibreWolf's more extreme features in its preferences (all the anti-fingerprinting stuff), though, which'd just leave you with "Firefox minus the Mozilla cruft".

12 July at 23:20 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
mcc

@gourd @brandon Can you turn on timezone reporting like other browsers have? A friend of mine who tried librewolf mentioned that Librewolf removed timezone reporting for fingerprinting reasons and they couldn't find a preference for it. Timezone reporting is important as many websites are unusable without it.

12 July at 23:21 | Open on mastodon.social
Dr. Brandon Wiley

@mcc @gourd Oh interesting, what is the critical use of timezone reporting? Like for calendars?

12 July at 23:23 | Open on mastodon.blanu.net
mcc

@brandon @gourd For example, here is the schedule page for "Games Done Quick", a biyearly event I am a fan of.

gamesdonequick.com/schedule/48

You'll notice the times are automatically shown in your local time zone. Because the page assumes this timezone feature will work, it doesn't *say* what timezone the times are listed relative to. Without timezone reporting, the page would probably default to GMT or something and be poorly usable.

12 July at 23:25 | Open on mastodon.social
mcc

@brandon @gourd This becomes more problematic if you consider a page which rather than being for entertainment is something where the time is critical, for example an airplane booking site.

12 July at 23:26 | Open on mastodon.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon Or absolutely hilarious cases like Best Buy refusing to let you place pickup orders if the store is closed based on your local browser time instead of checking on their end.

12 July at 23:26 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
mcc
Gourd replied to mcc

@mcc @brandon I have been so tempted to use this to place an order for pickup for during when the store is closed and see what happens, but I don't want to mess with random store employees.

12 July at 23:28 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
Gourd

@brandon @mcc Timestamps on social media posts, for one.

Half the reason I moved to a Mastodon Glitch Edition server was it lets you manually set time zone so I could have sensical Mastodon timestamps and ResistFingerprinting on.

12 July at 23:25 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon Going into Edit -> Settings -> LibreWolf and unchecking "Enable Resist Fingerprinting" causes timezone reporting to start working again.

12 July at 23:23 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
mcc

@gourd @brandon Cool! I guess my friend's specific complaint was they wanted the fingerprinting protection *other* than that single measure.

12 July at 23:26 | Open on mastodon.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon Their logic is that they want it to be an all-or-nothing toggle so that there isn't people can't have a more obvious signature by it only being partially spoofed, I think? *shrug*

12 July at 23:27 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
mcc

@gourd @brandon Uhhh wait. Now that you mention it that actually *is* a really strong fingerprinting signal lol

12 July at 23:29 | Open on mastodon.social
Gourd

@mcc @brandon At the least, I'd check the LibreWolf config page and think about "Silently block canvas access requests" and "Enable letterboxing" which are under the ResistFingerprinting one and one of them might be turned on by default? (Don't entirely remember.)

The first (block canvas access) suppresses warnings that a site is requesting to access your canvas and those are useful to know if something might break (it usually won't, but you can hit a button to dismiss it permanently for that site). The second locks LibreWolf to only display at common resolutions no matter what your window size is and put padding around it for the rest of the window. That one's too much for even me.

@mcc @brandon At the least, I'd check the LibreWolf config page and think about "Silently block canvas access requests" and "Enable letterboxing" which are under the ResistFingerprinting one and one of them might be turned on by default? (Don't entirely remember.)

The first (block canvas access) suppresses warnings that a site is requesting to access your canvas and those are useful to know if something might break (it usually won't, but you can hit a button to dismiss it permanently for that site)....

12 July at 23:34 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
Jessica's new Main

@mcc@mastodon.social @gourd@indiepocalypse.social @brandon@mastodon.blanu.net If you want some protections, you can install the "canvas blocker" extension. I believe at some point they recommended you at least install canvas blocker if you couldn't use rFP
for me I really want access to dark mode and rfp disables that.
as for android, you can install fennec fdroid which is basically firefox with telemetry disabled by default. Mull is more of the "aggressive privacy" angle if you're into that.

13 July at 0:21 | Open on kitsunes.club
yuki - queen of the snow
@mcc @gourd @brandon also, is there a way for it to send the prefered language to websites? i can live with most things being in english, but when dealing with government websites, i'd rather have them default to my native language. also, this is the kinda stuff that makes it much harder for me to send screenshots of stuff to friends, or even let them do something for a bit on my pc
13 July at 2:07 | Open on fedi.kemonomimi.gay
Dr. Brandon Wiley

@gourd @mcc Thanks for the recommendation! I'll try out LibreWolf. I also use TorBrowser sometimes, which is Firefox-derived. I'm sure they'll turn off all the new ad stuff, their very good about that sort of thing.

12 July at 23:22 | Open on mastodon.blanu.net
Gourd

@mcc @brandon For reference, the issue with Twitch isn't so much LibreWolf itself as Twitch aggressively being a dick about blocking logins from anything but the most popular and up to date user agents, and it doesn't like LibreWolf appearing as a slightly old copy of Firefox on Linux when resist fingerprinting is on.

I could get a user agent spoofer in place, but I'd have to constantly update it and it's easier just to use Chromium for the three seconds I need to grab API keys from my cookies for Streamlink and Chatterino.

@mcc @brandon For reference, the issue with Twitch isn't so much LibreWolf itself as Twitch aggressively being a dick about blocking logins from anything but the most popular and up to date user agents, and it doesn't like LibreWolf appearing as a slightly old copy of Firefox on Linux when resist fingerprinting is on.

13 July at 0:22 | Open on indiepocalypse.social
Jonathan Minnamon
Dr. Brandon Wiley

@hvarf @mcc It very well might be, but in my experience WebUSB does not work. My only success has been Chrome on macOS and the stock Chromium on Ubuntu. I have not had any luck with other Chromium-derived browsers.

12 July at 22:47 | Open on mastodon.blanu.net
LisPi

@brandon @mcc

so many people have migrated their firmware updaters to only working with WebUSB What a horrible idea. wtf

I assume fwupd is not an option for your stuff?

13 July at 22:47 | Open on udongein.xyz
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