From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Making package.el talk over Tor Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2023 11:12:35 +0200 Message-ID: <83v88xjipo.fsf@gnu.org> References: <8734ybkqf4.fsf@disroot.org> <87sf54q2t8.fsf@posteo.net> <87o7etlzx7.fsf@posteo.net> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="20902"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: rms@gnu.org, philipk@posteo.net, akib@disroot.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Stefan Kangas Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sun Dec 17 10:13:48 2023 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1rEnDY-0005Fa-AE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 17 Dec 2023 10:13:48 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rEnDB-000128-8l; Sun, 17 Dec 2023 04:13:25 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rEnD9-00011u-BU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 17 Dec 2023 04:13:23 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rEnD8-0000Qw-MZ; Sun, 17 Dec 2023 04:13:22 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From:Date: mime-version; bh=FmJ0kc5FGhHnAetz40WDeJIF1cfqV3XvJ1IQUDN0n+8=; b=VglTJKGFXnA1 bkRmtvaBYAJ7MIgqdR8CufnDrBBi+V4pXh+cI9qlZWaMiP5uh4oDMnlyNfhmgoslgXdsfRS+EHUWP 8HV/yo3JqgDc+UjLJOsYqGaYQNx/w1tXBPv6qwL6nmWAH5QryCKlROXJD0qgcV6uO8QGx2Rt1y0Al 6KeM3bFwz0aYiKzm5ONaXIxMh5s0kBagMUPS6oWHtl7hhsrwtarwRjyPnwfO87WS5nDMlIDMuPtB1 ch5Po1sORdQOqqeU7XHI19Sdu2L0LiL4y1zs3I1PtRj6Rf+eRZmtOyV3gZAWhEl6HTGY3N4UlEKtu 4Z4V2xeXjlekjC27FjLdRw==; In-Reply-To: (message from Stefan Kangas on Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:23:27 -0800) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:313912 Archived-At: > From: Stefan Kangas > Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:23:27 -0800 > Cc: akib@disroot.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org > > Richard Stallman writes: > > > > 185.220.101.26 - - [14/Dec/2023:13:04:00 +0100] "GET /test HTTP/1.1" 301 169 "https://amodernist.com/" "URL/Emacs Emacs/30.0.50 (PureGTK; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)" > > > > > As you can see the User-Agent indicates that I am using Emacs, what > > > version and even my architecture. Compare that to the user agent that > > > you'd regularly encounter from an average browser: > > > > We should (1) let users specify what User-Agent to send, and (2) maybe > > choose a different default. > > > > Icecat, by default, identifies itself as some widely used proprietary > > browser running on Windows. > > Should we bump the default to 'paranoid'? Do what icecat does? > > Does the remote ever need to know if we're using X11 or PureGTK? > I think they don't, and we should never add that information, in any > configuration. > > > > Other than the user-agent, there are certainly other bits of behaviour > > > that a malicious actor can use to track a user, such as the order in > > > which HTTP headers are transmitted, the size of chunks by which the > > > client sends and receives data and of course what requests aren't being > > > sent (e.g. due to a lack of Javascript in EWW). > > > > We could work on making Emacs-based browsing more similar to the most > > common browsers, in such aspects of visible behavior. > > If you are very concerned about your privacy, it's probably better to > browse the web using the Tor web browser and eschew Emacs altogether. > > How about telling users about this in the EWW manual? It looks like a changeset was installed on master which changes how URL behaves in this matter, see commit 346e571230. I'm worried that this is a backward-incompatible change which doesn't seem to have any way for users to get back old behavior. I think we should provide such a way, and I think this change should be called out in the "Incompatible changes" section of NEWS. Thanks.