this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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I'm still trying to wrap my head around fingerprinting, so excuse my ignorance. Doesn't an installed plugin such as Canvas Blocker make you more uniquely identifiable? My reasoning is that very few people have this plugin relatively speaking.
Iirc, Websites can’t query addons unless those addons manipulate the DOM in a way that exposes themselves.
They can query extensions.
Addons are things installed inside the browser. Like uBlock, HTTPS Everywhere, Firefox Containerr, etc.
Extensions are installed outside the browser. Such as Flashplayer, the Gnome extensions installer, etc.
Further: the Canvas API doesn’t have any requirements on rendering accuracy.
By deferring to the GPU, font library, etc, tracking code can generate an image that is in most cases unique to your machine.
So blocking the Canvas API would return a 0. Which is less unique than what it would be normally.
Maybe if they can connect you to your other usage but it’s probably more of their resources and such a small % of the population that it isn’t worth the time to subvert? Idk just guessing here