A facebook employee explained me how tracking works. Its not the email address Meta is concerned about. Its the IP, device identifiers and location. Meta doesnt care about the email at all apart from sending you emails for notification. Even with a fake email they exactly know who you are. Let’s say you visit CNN.com which has facebook tracker. Facebook has the IP and the device identifiers. Now you login with fake email account on Instagram, facebook knows that’s the IP ans the same device hence it “must” be the same person That’s how facebook creates shadow profiles.

    • clobubba
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      1 year ago

      I like the EFF, but I don’t agree with the report this generates. There are two counters to fingerprinting: have the same fingerprint as everyone else (Mullvad Browser is based on this idea) and to have a unique fingerprint that changes regularly (The CanvasBlocker extension supports this approach).

      Since most of the time I’m in Firefox with CanvasBlocker, I want to see unique fingerprints, but also that they keep changing.

      • pjhenry1216
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        71 year ago

        There’s a decent bit in their site as to how fighting fingerprinting by trying to be more common can make you still stand out, so mullvad may not work out depending on how it implements this concept. Randomizing fingerprinting sounds like it could work (I haven’t researched it so I don’t have enough info to agree or disagree, but sounds legit at the very least) and expecting their report to understand that is beyond the scope of the tool. I mean, you couldn’t actually test that method is effective without recording it over multiple sessions/days/etc. Sure you want a unique fingerprint, but seeing a unique fingerprint once doesn’t mean it’s working.

    • @BallShapedMan
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      121 year ago

      Fantastic link, I need to do better than I am. I appreciate you sharing this.

      • @[email protected]
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        171 year ago

        For what it’s worth protecting against fingerprinting is pretty hard, so don’t feel bad if it tells you your browser has a unique fingerprint. For most people (if you’re using Firefox) going to the settings and turning on strict tracking protection and “Do Not Track” set to always send is good enough and will probably stop most attempts by blocking domains that will try fingerprinting. And use Ublock Origin, people.

        • @BallShapedMan
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          91 year ago

          I use Firefox and Ublock, I’ll do the do not track now!

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          use Ublock Origin,

          Yep. I have a blanket “block all Facebook” rule. A lot harder to gather info if your browser refuses to load data and scripts coming from their domains.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      Mullvad’s website has this nice widget that checks if your ip address can be found by dns too. Good for busting competitors

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      That site says “Your browser has a unique fingerprint” even though I run Firefox, uBlock, Privacy Badger, and have privacy.resistFingerprinting set to true. My main problem may be plugins, once you have more than a few your set can be pretty unique.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Try going down the page and looking for the categories with more than a few bits of identifying information. I’m running LibreWolf with just uBlock Origin and Dark Reader (which I don’t think influences results) and I’m able to get nearly-unique, instead of unique (but I do get unique on default settings). TBB gets non-unique, which is a good set of results to compare to.

        In my case I noticed that my fonts were really unique so I set browser.display.use_document_fonts = 0. Also I use my WM to set my page resolution to 1920x1080, which seems to have a better fingerprint than the default LibreWolf floating resolution of 1600x900 (and even the letterboxing resolutions, from what I can tell).

        I just spent some time testing again and checking for anything else. RFP does force a generic user agent, but unfortunately it keeps the version information and I can’t figure out how to change it with RFP on. Would be nice to set it to the ESR version used by TBB (which has lower bits), but I’m not sure if that would lead to a more unique fingerprint (if, say, a feature was detected that is available in later versions but not ESR).

        Edit: just tried Mullvad browser, and it’s non-unique! Might be the best option.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Iirc unique != identifiable necessarily, because your fingerprint might be different while still unique the next time around.

      • @Byereddithellolemmy
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        1 year ago

        Try LibreWolf

        Edit: interesting to see this was up voted, then downvoted. Would be good to understand why someone disagrees that LibreWolf would be a viable option here.

  • @[email protected]
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    311 year ago

    Firefox has containers that allows you to seperate all websites in categories where they can’t reach anything outside of it.

    There’s a special one for Facebook

    • @[email protected]
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      81 year ago

      There are still…I dunno…probably DNS hops, IP, time’s of day, browser window size, browser user agent…

      And if you access any page with any similar parameters on your phone or another household device on any site with FB tracking, it’s over.

      It looks like in the last 7 days my phone has cutoff over 150,000 different tracking attempts and that’s just catchable ones and on my phone.

  • @[email protected]
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    281 year ago

    I don’t use Facebook but I’m 100% sure they have my data.

    A lot of apps that uses Facebook login, debugger, React Native, etc. allows it to collect as much user data as it can and send it to FB servers because that’s the default.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      I dont have facebook, and I explicitly tell family not to put my pictures on their facebook pages or mention me at all.

      I’m still 100% convinced facebook has my biometric data, my home address, and what I ate for dinner last week.

      The amount of data they collect is insane, and intrusive.

      Every time it comes up, i’m reminded of a sex worker who was doxed by facebook because she in a parking lot that a former client was in, and it had used proximity data and shit to link her Sex Work Phone/Facebook Account, to her real Phone/Facebook account, which was then given to the client as a suggested contact.

      • ram
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        51 year ago

        Facebook takes biometric data from pictures that aren’t uploaded to the platform. All it takes is for them to have access to the filesystem of the user’s mobile OS.

        This is why I fullstop do not let people take photos of me where I can help it. I’m fucking tired of being made a datapoint.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      I’m pretty sure React/React Native doesn’t have any Facebook tracking built in. The dev community would crucify them for that.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Preaching to the choir but good to remind some people. Thats why you avoid or limit use of those services. Use tor or a VPN and use multiple layers of blocking such as DNS and in browser blocking. Also foss only applications where possible.

  • @[email protected]
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    181 year ago

    Dont use facebook and have a dns filter that kills trackers and adverts such as Control D or pihole

    • YⓄ乙 OP
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      41 year ago

      I tried using control d and their dns location changer. Its crap

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Really, i have been using the free one that blocks malware, ads, trackers, and social media (spybook, etc) and its been great.

    • asudox
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      11 year ago

      PiHole and RethinkDNS seem to be the best options tbh.

  • @Jimmycakes
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    161 year ago

    Google knows who you are based on your browser window size. You can’t escape shit from these guys.

  • Pons_Aelius
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    151 year ago

    Strange game. The only way to win is not to play…

    How about a nice game of chess?

        • @[email protected]
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          81 year ago

          I am using Firefox, and with a shit-load of add-ons that supposedly prevent unwanted cookies and fingerprinting. I use a VPN.

          I was permanently banned from Reddit (for advocating firebombing nazis, as if that’s a bad thing). When I logged in to an alternate account, that account was also permanently banned. Any account I tried to create after that point ended up being banned within a week, regardless of whether or not I was using it. I checked online. Apparently this has become fairly common in the last 2-3 years.

          While you can minimize your digital fingerprint, it’s almost impossible to prevent all digital fingerprinting. The EFF says that I have very strong protection against digital fingerprinting, but I’m still identifiable to a company with sufficient resources to devote to the task.

            • Possibly linux
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              1 year ago

              There is no such thing as a “good VPN provider”. VPNs were not created for privacy. They exist to allow individual users and groups to network together in enterprise environments

              If you want more security use i2p or tor

  • GreenBottles
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    91 year ago

    just don’t use the bullshit in the first place

      • GreenBottles
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        11 year ago

        it is pretty simple actually there’s a lot of tools to block and ignore these companies in a lot of ways. you can also choose to not use any other products which is a very simple thing to do as well

  • edric
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    51 year ago

    While browser containers won’t work since you’re using the same IP anyway, blocking the trackers themselves would be more effective. DNS blocking, uBlock, and Privacy Badger can help block fb trackers on websites. So fb knows your ip, but at least they can’t track you across other sites.

    • @EricHill78
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      21 year ago

      People say that it’s redundant using Ublock and Privacy Badger together but I’ve tested Ublock without PB and with PB on the cover your tracks site. Without it it states that I’m partially protected and with both on it says I’m covered. I used ungoogled chromium for the test.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        I don’t know if it is the case here, but uBlock Origin lets some trackers through and redirects them to empty addresses, so they are effectively useless, good as blocked. This is done so the website doesn’t detect that you blocked the tracker, in order to avoid breaking website functionality.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    I think Firefox cookie isolation (not containers) should block that. Also, always use Noscript and block that shit entirely. You will have no Tracking anymore basically

  • Carlos Francisco 📑
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    51 year ago

    There’s a lo of information that sites, not only Facebook, use to track you. Email address can be one this. Anyway, I consider that using anonymous email address is a good idea not only to avoid tracking, also for security reasons I case of filtering, for instance.

  • @[email protected]
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    41 year ago

    And people dont share devices?

    I have a family pc in the living room. We all use it.

    Im not on facebook though.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      There’s got to be more metadata involved in fingerprinting. The type of content you’re looking at. Maybe even deriving some sort of signature from your mouse movements.