Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking, but you can fight for your privacy! | Tuta
tuta.com
As Google gives you the choice to opt out of cookie tracking, it silently erodes your privacy by tracking you with fingerprinting.
  • atro_city@fedia.io
    20·
    3 days ago

    Digital fingerprinting collects and analyzes multiple data points from a user’s device - such as screen resolution, installed fonts, browser settings, and even battery status - to create a unique profile

    Why is all this information available in the first place? Why the hell does a website need to know which fonts are installed, which browser settings are active, and why the hell would it require the battery status? Why are browsers sharing that much information in the first place?

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      261·
      3 days ago

      Because Javascript was a cancerous mistake. Web browsers should never have been scope-creeped to allow executable “apps” instead of “pages” of document markup.

        • Kernal64English
          41·
          2 days ago

          There was no problem requiring a solution. Just like cars functioned perfectly fine as cars for decades before becoming gross, always online, data harvesting privacy invasion devices, the “solution” would have been to just not do that. Cars used to let you drive places just fine before jamming internet connections in them. Similarly, browsers used to let you browse the web just fine before we decided to abandon stand alone software development to jam everything in a browser.

          • atro_city@fedia.io
            24·
            2 days ago

            I’m not sure what the solution is that you’re proposing. Web documents with links to download software instead of web apps? Am I understanding that right?

            • Kernal64English
              31·
              2 days ago

              Web apps don’t need to exist, so yeah. A website should just be a website. If there’s something that NEEDS a whole ass application to run, that should be something you have the choice to download and install, not implemented in an invasive way in unrelated software meant to show some interactive text, images, and video.

              • atro_city@fedia.io
                25·
                2 days ago

                You’re shouting at clouds old man. I thought you were going to propose an actual solution, not just weather against the times.

                • Kernal64English
                  3·
                  2 days ago

                  🙄

                  Your post asking for a solution was in the past tense. I answered in that context. Anyone following the discussion is able to see that. If you changed your frame of reference in your mind to the present day, you sure didn’t communicate that here, so that’s on you. How would we solve this problem today? I don’t think we can. Javascript and the like are way too entrenched and web apps are a way of life now. We’re stuck with this privacy invading nonsense until something drastic changes, but I don’t know that that change would look like.

    • 299792458ms@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      I suppose it queries for the fonts in any given website’s stylesheet font stack but I would not know better.

  • Chozo@fedia.io
    33·
    3 days ago

    I’m gonna be honest, I’m skeptical of the claims this article makes. Tuta has a history of using fake emails and “updates” from competitors in order to sell their product. Last year, they spread a screenshot on their Mastodon account of a fake email allegedly from Google, announcing that Gmail was shutting down. They were told in the post that their claim was inaccurate and that the “email” they were sharing was fake, but they left their post up anyway.

    It wasn’t until they were told that they could be sued for false advertisement that they removed the post. Their response was effectively “Oops, we forgot to fact-check it before going to bed”, which I’m not sure I believe, because how do you write an entire post based on a screenshot, with the intention to sell your product, and not think even for half a second “Hmm maybe I should confirm some of these wild claims I’m about to make”? It’s either malice or incompetence, neither of which instill trust.

    I’m not saying this to defend Google, just to highlight that Tuta doesn’t take issue with lying to potential customers, and that’s something you should know before you give them your money. If they’re willing to spread such a stupid and easily-disproven lie before you’re even a customer, what are they willing to lie about once you give them your credit card?