Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox protection against fingerprinting does not work

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

gumaa95
gumaa95
more options

I'm trying restrict usage of fingerprinting for my browser. I've already checked some articles and resources, for example this one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting

Currently my setup is like this: - I set "Enhanced Tracking Protection" to "strict" - I set "privacy.resistFingerprinting" to "true" - I'm using uBlock Origin

But still when I visit https://amiunique.org/fp I'm getting the information that I'm unique. The worst performance is amongst: Headers attributes:

  • Content language: <0.01%

Javascript attributes:

  • User agent - 0.49%
  • Content language - 0.04%
  • Canvas - Unique (this is weird because I'm even getting a notification about blocked canvas, maybe it is a quirk of this website)
  • Screen height - 0.05%
  • Screen available Height - 0.07%
  • Media devices - Unique

Is it expected for Firefox to fail that test? By Firefox own marketing I expected that I'm protected from fingerprinting but in fact I'm not. And worst yet it isn't even turned on by default.

What can I do more to actually block fingerprinting? I tried Ghostery and Privacy Badger extensions but they didn't seem to help so I removed them.

I'm trying restrict usage of fingerprinting for my browser. I've already checked some articles and resources, for example this one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting Currently my setup is like this: - I set "Enhanced Tracking Protection" to "strict" - I set "privacy.resistFingerprinting" to "true" - I'm using uBlock Origin But still when I visit https://amiunique.org/fp I'm getting the information that I'm unique. The worst performance is amongst: Headers attributes: * Content language: <0.01% Javascript attributes: * User agent - 0.49% * Content language - 0.04% * Canvas - Unique (this is weird because I'm even getting a notification about blocked canvas, maybe it is a quirk of this website) * Screen height - 0.05% * Screen available Height - 0.07% * Media devices - Unique Is it expected for Firefox to fail that test? By Firefox own marketing I expected that I'm protected from fingerprinting but in fact I'm not. And worst yet it isn't even turned on by default. What can I do more to actually block fingerprinting? I tried Ghostery and Privacy Badger extensions but they didn't seem to help so I removed them.

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Firefox's default protection against fingerprinting focuses on known tracking servers and is implemented through Enhanced Tracking Protection.

As explained in "Firefox's protection against fingerprinting", the privacy.resistFingerprinting preference is experimental and still under development. That is why it is set to false by default.

In my opinion, there is a fundamental problem with using that feature at this time: It follows the principle of blending in with the crowd, but not a lot of people use this feature, so what it changes simply can't hide you very effectively. Maybe someday this will become a default setting used by millions of people but for now, I don't think it helps most people.

If you want to change your content language header, see: Choose display languages for multilingual web pages.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Best would be to use the en-US Firefox version and not a localized version if you currently use one. Note that RFP no longer spoofs the Firefox version in the user agent and sets the OS to Windows 10. RFP is mainly meant for the Tor browser and using it on release has some disadvantages where the UTC timezone can cause issues with emails or other websites rely on local time.