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Are profiles an effective way to prevent cross-site identification?

  • 4 iimpendulo
  • 2 inale ngxaki
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  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu jagan605

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I'm concerned about my privacy while browsing the web, and for my general browsing I have a special configuration similar to the one presented here: https://gist.github.com/atcuno/3425484ac5cce5298932

Basically I have a couple of add-ons that help to reduce tracking and advertising, a user-agent spoofer, and other builtin privacy settings (like clearing cookies on close). I am primarily concerned with making sure every web search, article I read, or visit to a web site with trackers is not connected to one persistent browser fingerprint or id that can be also connected with my real-life identity.

Now, whether or not these efforts keep me safe from the persistent profile that can be tracked is a question for another time.

      • What I want to know is if another "profile" in the Firefox profile manager for online logins associated with my real-life identity (bank, email, spotify, library, etc.) will somehow ooze into the "private" profile I created. ***

The "login" profile won't have all of the privacy addons and settings as the "private" profile, because they too-easily break logins, and because the profile will already be associated with my real-life identity, so I don't plan on using it except to browse those sites. Cookies will be allowed to stay, and no more than basic adblocking.

Previously I used Chromium for this purpose, but I don't want to. Firefox works better in many ways. It seems like I should be safe doing this, as each new profile appears to have a completely blank configuration and cookie jar, but better safe than sorry, right?

THANK YOU for looking at my question and I hope you can help!

I'm concerned about my privacy while browsing the web, and for my general browsing I have a special configuration similar to the one presented here: https://gist.github.com/atcuno/3425484ac5cce5298932 Basically I have a couple of add-ons that help to reduce tracking and advertising, a user-agent spoofer, and other builtin privacy settings (like clearing cookies on close). I am primarily concerned with making sure every web search, article I read, or visit to a web site with trackers is not connected to one persistent browser fingerprint or id that can be also connected with my real-life identity. Now, whether or not these efforts keep me safe from the persistent profile that can be tracked is a question for another time. ***What I want to know is if another "profile" in the Firefox profile manager for online logins associated with my real-life identity (bank, email, spotify, library, etc.) will somehow ooze into the "private" profile I created. *** The "login" profile won't have all of the privacy addons and settings as the "private" profile, because they too-easily break logins, and because the profile will already be associated with my real-life identity, so I don't plan on using it except to browse those sites. Cookies will be allowed to stay, and no more than basic adblocking. Previously I used Chromium for this purpose, but I don't want to. Firefox works better in many ways. It seems like I should be safe doing this, as each new profile appears to have a completely blank configuration and cookie jar, but better safe than sorry, right? THANK YOU for looking at my question and I hope you can help!

All Replies (4)

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You can enable privacy.resistFingerprinting in about:config. This is explained in detail here.

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Not only does this not answer my question, but the privacy.resistFingerprinting option is not mentioned anywhere on the page you linked to. Why even attempt an answer if you don't take the time to read my question? The second sentence of your answer is false; the link is unhelpful and mostly unrelated to my question.

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The fingerprinting Wiki article was started years ago when this pref wasn't present in Firefox

See this for bug reports about fingerprinting

Different profiles aren't really a solution against fingerprinting. Firefox already hides a lot of data from websites in current releases and if you use content blockers to block content then you would probably more identifiable then without such blockers, but using builtin means like Tracking Protection and blocking third-party cookies.

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reading said

Not only does this not answer my question, but the privacy.resistFingerprinting option is not mentioned anywhere on the page you linked to. Why even attempt an answer if you don't take the time to read my question? The second sentence of your answer is false; the link is unhelpful and mostly unrelated to my question.

The wiki article explains the rationale behind using the option I mentioned.