Browser Fingerprinting

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

Here is an interesting article on so called "Browser
Fingerprinting" [1]. This can be of some concern to
people using uncommon browsers like Emacs-w3m.

The way they do fingerprinting is with cookies, with
JavaScript, and/or with HTML5 canvas (which uses
JavaScript).

Because Emacs-w3m doesn't support JavaScript, one should
be safe from all that save for the cookies, but they can
be be disabled with

  (setq w3m-use-cookies nil)

Then there is also the User-Agent field in the HTTP
request which browser supplies voluntarily.
Because Emacs-w3m isn't the most common of browsers,
this field can be used to identify YOU - possibly.
Inhibit with

  (setq w3m-add-user-agent nil)

Now, check out the progress on [2] :)

(The language is still "en" - however I don't think
anyone can be tracked using that data...)

Of course, the IP is still there, because otherwise the
server won't know where to send the requested HTML.
I think it is much more likely that tracking will be
done using that, than the browser fingerprint!
But that's not a browser issue, people who look for that
kind of anonymity will probably use VPN or Tor or be on
some other *net altogether, besides the internet...

Even if you feel you have nothing to hide, and you are
not paranoid, it can be a good feeling not to give
anything to these bozos anyway :)


[1] https://pixelprivacy.com/resources/browser-fingerprinting/

[2] https://amiunique.org/fpNoJS

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