[noizejoy]

I’ve been following privacy issues and technology for a while, but haven’t come across a foundational discussion of (a) the merits of and (b) technical implementations of different approaches to avoid fingerprinting:

“hiding” vs “blending in”(making me look identical to countless others - maybe even randomizing who I look like in a smart way).

I wonder if any subject area experts reading this thread would be willing to share a summary of their knowledge and thoughts here.

[MrScurt]

There are countless add-ons to stop fingerprinting, ad-tracking, disable WebRTC, and force things such as HTTPS. As you've touched on above, these add-ons can be used as unique identifiers to attach your activity to your 'profile'.

Just a thought: I think the route Mozilla is taking is where the industry is heading. More open-source/transparency means more privacy protections for the user. If we get to the point where every browser has built in security features, fingerprinting becomes more of a challenge.

Websites themselves could provide the functionality of a data broker. I am perfectly okay if I get suggested products by a company that already has my data.

In my honest opinion, the current landscape is more than hostile towards the average user and needs immediate course correction.

[mirimir]

As Mirimir, I don't worry at all about fingerprinting. Because that persona is totally focused on privacy and anonymity stuff. Perhaps unusually so, but so it goes.

But then, here's the thing. My other personas are similarly focused, but on other stuff. And they don't use English.

A determined global adversary could link them through traffic analysis. But it's a big Internet, and I don't make it easy.