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What information does Firefox Focus give out?

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  • Last reply by enginestar

enginestar
enginestar
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Just wondering... what information does Firefox Focus give out? OK... so it blocks trackers and deletes cookies when you exist the browser... Does it tell the end websites everything about you? Like what mobile and other details?

I checked out a page on a website called privacy.net. This tells you everything the websites can know about you. They give you an encrypted string score based on all information collected.

I tried using Firefox Focus with different IP's. Each time I ran the test with a new IP, I still got the same encrypted string.

That's just scary.

Just wondering... what information does Firefox Focus give out? OK... so it blocks trackers and deletes cookies when you exist the browser... Does it tell the end websites everything about you? Like what mobile and other details? I checked out a page on a website called privacy.net. This tells you everything the websites can know about you. They give you an encrypted string score based on all information collected. I tried using Firefox Focus with different IP's. Each time I ran the test with a new IP, I still got the same encrypted string. That's just scary.

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Websites can compute a "fingerprint" based on browser data, such as the user agent string, screen dimensions, and other factors. If they do a halfway decent job, then your fingerprint will be unique or extremely rare. Usually these sites show you exactly what browser data they were able to extract.

It is possible to set some versions of Firefox to lie about various browser characteristics, but this creates a number of inconveniences to support the lie and I'm not sure it's worth it because if only a few hundred peoples' browsers tell the lie, your fingerprint will still be extremely rare.

The good news is that Tracking Protection blocks known fingerprinting services by default, so other than the test sites, you shouldn't expect to encounter it very often in the wild.

enginestar
enginestar Question owner
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@jscher2000 thanks for the reply. It's just so frustrating. I have nothing to hide - but that doesn't give permission to websites to fingerprint and identify pinpoint and know everything.

EDIT: I just had a thought. The purpose of Firefox Focus is so that you are not tracked and traced. So they can't follow you with ads or track your behaviour etc. If they can STILL pinpoint who you are... then what's the point of it all??

I personally think the burden now falls on the likes of Mozilla to make browsers that reports blank information if the user so wishes - and to make this very very widely available and allow the user to do very very easily. (Otherwise, if there's just a handful of users using, then that in itself helps pinpoint them as they are the only ones hiding!) Just my opinion.

Modified by enginestar