this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

33339 readers
911 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Can someone help me understand this? If hundreds of thousands of people use a popular browser extension, how does that make it easier for you to be singled out among them? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this, can anyone help?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, turning off adblocker is worse. You should be using Tor browser with default configuration to browse privately, and never sign in to anything to further avoid getting tracked.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

In the context of fingerprinting I disagree. The vast majority of the world population do NOT use an ad-blocker (supposedly maybe 15% do at most)... so having an adblocker can be used to narrow you down even more IMO. Many extensions can have this issue afaik, especially if it modifies the DOM.

[–] Emberleaf@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago

Actually as of 2024, 31.5% of internet users worldwide use an adblocker. Source: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

However, allowing ads means allowing tracking. You got corelation with the ads being served from ad brokers, who can now see what sites you been on and have a record of where you've been.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Yes but I think you still need a unique fingerprint in order to tie that data to a single person... and there are much less people who use ad-blockers than those who don't, so to me it's an extra bit of identifying information; obviously this puts the privacy-conscious user in a difficult position and I don't know that there's a perfect answer.

[–] Emberleaf@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

never sign in to anything to further avoid getting tracked.

You're going to have to tell me how that's possible on an everyday-use basis. How do you do your banking? How did you access Lemmy?

[–] refalo@programming.dev 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I don't think it was meant exactly that literally. If you use online banking then of course you have to allow whatever they require for it to work. But for non-necessary services that have an account feature... any time you use those of course will have more of your information out there to sell and track.

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Don't use your Tor session to sign in. Also banks will probably not let you sign in via Tor.

[–] Emberleaf@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago

Trust me, they don't. ;)