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by Departed7405 879 days ago
Add-ons are terrible because they fingerprint you.Javascript allows for sharing of addons names. Having this niche add-on coupled with your device and browser type, IP, timezone this gives unique fingerprint. This comes from someone who used to have 50+ Firefox add-ons.
5 comments

"Plugins" like "This browser can natively view PDFs." are detectable via JavaScript. There's no way for a site to see Firefox add-ons.
it should be noted that this is different on Chrome https://browserleaks.com/chrome
Can you elaborate more on how Javascript allows for sharing of addon names? I didn't know this and wasn't able to find any references on it.
unfortunately, your fingerprint is more than likely unique either way: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Why does this matter?
Because people who really need the privacy can be identified. Ideally, you want to help them so that their browsing don’t stand out (so that their browsing and yours are virtually the same).
I mean, isn't the only way to go about that to be completely vanilla or do what the masses do, then? Because if you start blocking all these cookies, canvas, javascript, etc- won't your browser's fingerprint be even more unique since you'd be the only one who's traffic data would be incomplete?
you could also use user scrits and save on addons?