Posted by mwheelz 1 day ago
Bunk. You asked a geolocation api/service to map my ip address back to a location. You _did_ ask for my location, using my IP as a key. And my IP is pretty much required in order for communication on the internet to work (outside of using services to hide it, but then _they_ have your info instead).
If I have a dictionary, I don't have to ask the meaning of a word I hear from someone I am speaking to, I can look it up in the dictionary. I may infer an incorrect meaning because the word has multiple meanings or is a colloquialism.
If I need to clarify that inaccuracy, I need other data points (for example, the context of the conversation), or I can ask my conversational partner for clarification).
The geolocation API requires prompting the user for permission before it can be used: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation...
Also, though, of COURSE your address arrived first... how else are they going to send back the data you are requesting?
Tor and similar multi-hop proxies, depending on construction, supposedly can't match source to destination IPs.
> San Pablo, California, United States > You appear to be in San Pablo, United States. Your internet provider is AT&T Enterprises, LLC. We know this because your IP address — 108.xxx.xxx.233 — was the first thing your device sent us
I am in San Francisco. IPs are not a reliable location identifier and never have been. Especially on mobile. Thank you for coming to my ted talk
That checks out. I think what I have is similar to a graphics card but isn't quite.
More of you should be running current Firefox. It actually has serious engineering work going into protecting you from web tracking.
I work for a team entirely dependent on web tracking for Fraud prevention. The things Firefox does work to protect you and make our job harder. They genuinely make it harder for websites to track you.
Other things that genuinely help: Apple private relay. Some VPNs. Generated unique credit cards.
- Some of the numbers are off, eg - low contrast in dark mode makes text hard to readThe fact that it begins with my IP address reminds me of those dubious VPN ads.
City is wrong, I may speak English but it's not my native language.
As other people said, there are much better pages showing you your browser fingerprint.
It doesn't matter whether you actually speak english natively or not, nobody cares about the actual values. Web sites don't actually care whether you have a robust font package in some way to discern whether you are a font hipster or something, they are just collecting signals.
What matters is that your physical machine and web browser combo report these values about the same way every single time they are probed, and that is used to reliably track YOU, uniquely, with great accuracy, with EVERYTHING you do on the internet, every site you visit, every mouse movement, every purchase linked back to you.
Everything.
The actual values don't have to match "reality" in any way. It's just about generating bits of signal about your setup.
So don't you think presenting the info as it's a great uncovered secret and then getting it wrong will lead the layman to disbelieveing everything?
Of course, the other extreme is the EFF site that says "Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.33 bits of identifying information.".
There must be some middle ground to present this info.
> news.ycombinator.com
This has always bothered me the most. I disabled the 'Referer' header once, but it breaks many websites.
That was actually my only surprise, everything else I was expecting.
edit: ignore this, looks like I just needed to save my preferences again. Thanks for showing me that I have been leaking my referer for some mysterious amount of time.
about:config -> network.http.referer.spoofSourceIt seems odd that any site would require a user come from somewhere.
Firefox on Android with ublock
First paragraph, and I don't like this wording already. It's as if "my device" has any choice in the matter.
And actually, it's the reverse! Often enough your own device does not know your _actual_ public IP address without asking some kind of public service to snitch on your internet connection.