On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 3:53 PM, Martin Thomson <m...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 11:15 PM, Aryeh Gregor <a...@aryeh.name> wrote: > > Taking a step back: is fingerprinting really a solvable problem in > > practice? At this point, are there a significant fraction of users > > who can't be fingerprinted pretty reliably? Inevitably, the more > > features we add to the platform, the more fingerprinting surface we'll > > expose. At a certain point, we might be taking away a lot of features > > for the sake of trying to stop the unstoppable. (I have no idea if > > this is actually true now, though. This is a genuine question. :) ) > > https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/unsanctioned-tracking/ > > The conclusion: it's probably a lost cause, but we still shouldn't be > building more of these. > I'm not sure I agree with this characterization of the link above. Here's the relevant text: "Believes that, because combatting fingerprinting is difficult, new Web specifications should take reasonable measures to avoid adding unneeded fingerprinting surface area. However, added surface area should not be a primary factor in determining whether to add a new feature." The more principled position is that we shouldn't have to rely on UA > sniffing (which this is) to determine what a browser can and cannot > do. That there are bugs is the main reason we have these things. > I agree people shouldn't be using UA sniffing for this purpose, but it's very useful for determining what the heck is going on when there are inevitably bugs. Fixing the buildID to the major version (52) plus the channel > (Nightly) would be the simplest fix without adding lots of extra > complexity. > Maybe. The nightly population is pretty small and inherently has less privacy, and release tends to be fairly homogenous. I'd like to see some real analysis of the privacy impact before removing a useful diagnostic surface. -Ekr _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
