It advertises itself as "prevent Google from tracking you around the web", which I consider a false and misleading statement. It doesn't prevent it. It is not "not perfect", it is not even far from perfect.
I think it is very important to make Internet users aware that cookies are the red herring in all privacy issues that are plaguing the World Wide Web. Cookie feature in modern browsers is just a tiny puzzle piece in a larger picture, consisting of wide range of entry points used for collecting data. It includes invasive JavaScript fingerprinting that can easily extract a list of installed fonts, local IP address and list of media devices from WebRTC, device capabilities, WebGL/Canvas fingerprinting, content filter list detection and much much more. Even with JS disabled most browsers share so much explicit information that is enough for precise identification without the use of cookies.
Is it impossible? For 99.99% of Internet users it requires so much hoops to hop through it might as well be impossible. However, I believe that awareness could slow down this privacy decline. I hope users will finally start demanding more native privacy controls in their browsers. Native JavaScript filter in Firefox would be a good place to start.
They aren’t impossible steps, just get virtualbox for sites you don’t want tracking you. Unless they can break out of the VM they can’t fingerprint the hardware even if JavaScript is enabled
How exactly would you use the attributes of a VM for tracking? You can have a separate one for fb and for google. All they are going to be able to track is what you want them to know
ReCaptchas, the inability to post to many sites because tor ip addresses have been blacklisted, latency, etc. It’s better than nothing but like many solutions it doesn’t really seem to address the underlying problem.
I think it is very important to make Internet users aware that cookies are the red herring in all privacy issues that are plaguing the World Wide Web. Cookie feature in modern browsers is just a tiny puzzle piece in a larger picture, consisting of wide range of entry points used for collecting data. It includes invasive JavaScript fingerprinting that can easily extract a list of installed fonts, local IP address and list of media devices from WebRTC, device capabilities, WebGL/Canvas fingerprinting, content filter list detection and much much more. Even with JS disabled most browsers share so much explicit information that is enough for precise identification without the use of cookies.
Is it impossible? For 99.99% of Internet users it requires so much hoops to hop through it might as well be impossible. However, I believe that awareness could slow down this privacy decline. I hope users will finally start demanding more native privacy controls in their browsers. Native JavaScript filter in Firefox would be a good place to start.