ironic how this is posted below an article that says that testing websites are not reliable and that you should not read into the results unless you understand them
Turns out, he is not talking about the kind of people I fit in. I am using Tor for more than a decade at this point, and have been a very avid I2P torrent user as well since many years. If not the same, I compare pretty well in experience in this aspect.
He is talking about the kind of people who open Panopticon for fingerprint tests and misread the fractions and decimal numbers and information there when comparing, and then scream on reddit with misinterpreted posts aimed to get awards and upvotes at the cost of sanity of many people.
deviceinfo.me is not the kind of site and data used for demonstrations he is talking about. I have a fair amount of experience to make this claim.
To expand on the attacks that are mitigated, avoidance is a better measure than mitigation. Hence the reason why I say noJS is a better policy, the next best is turning on JS manually when needed. Keeping JS on all the time is a foolās errand if they want to go beyond standard levels of privacy and anonymity. The author himself mentions in the last line as a subtle disclaimer why it can be a choice.
You know how gait movements IRL work? Turns out, Google Recaptcha makes very good use of how you move and click with cursor on the captcha boxes. If you thought AI/ML image training was the only thing Google was making users do, now you know something new.
You want to know what a JS enabled Tor Browser looks like? A standard Firefox private mode tab with uBlock Origin medium mode and arkenfox user.js applied.
thatās simply not true. TB has further enhancement and code changes, it is based on ESR plus itās not the same as a private window at all since private mode does not write to disk for example. most importantly tho: TB has crowd and the Tor network
Firefox has a bigger userbase than Tor Browser users, and it is a pretty uncontested claim logically. Firefox has Tor Projectās code for anti fingerprinting and per site data isolation upstreamed to Firefoxās private browsing mode since the past 15-20 or so versions now.
usability, a browser with JS disabled by default is not a good everyday browser for most. the more people use Tor Browser daily and have a good experience with it, the larger the crowd gets.
Does that not make the argument for Firefox stronger for regular daily browsing usage, since it has an even bigger userbase? You can use uBlock Origin and you can enjoy Tor Browserās dFPI and per site data isolation benefits in Firefoxās private browsing mode.
I also donāt get what the difference between typing private stuff on facebook on tor or behind a vpn or on your ISPās network is.
You missed where I said how having JS on means you are keylogged easily. Your caps lock is also detectable, just to be clear. You are also forgetting that making strings out of this keylogged stuff, and then applying stylometry analysis is a very easy and cost effective way into unmasking identities behind pseudonyms. I do this myself regularly as part of OSINT investigations. It is how I have also unmasked many sockpuppets on Lemmy, Matrix, Reddit in the past few years.
The author has a very agreeable position with me on what he speaks, but it is like how anti-imperialist viewpoints sound very correct in todayās political scenario, but every single nuance does not have to be perfect to get the idea across. He is getting the idea across here, and that is why you are arguing at length with me.
Edit: I think this explanation is lacking. I must expand on it.
First I will get out of the way elements that can be spoofed with JS on:
Now it is time to address elements which having JS on reveals. Feel free to correct me whatever is spoofed by Tor Browser.
Monitor colour depth support may not be a significant issue, as many have standard monitors.
Can you explain me how these are spoofed in Tor Browser while having JS on? I have ignored the fonts as those are spoofed, and there are no timing attack vectors in this list. The last bullet point, if you want to talk about, can be used to identify if someone used a really fast connection ISP at an unusual place and time.
Nameserver connections can be a possible issue with exit node identification, if we are to assume the OPSEC of an average journalist just downloading and using Tor Browser on any machine. If we assume relays can protect them, we have other vectors here, likeā¦
⦠page scroll and mouse cursor positions, caps lock on or off, last key pressed.
Keylogging, as explained earlier, is a very cost effective way to unmask people. Telling people on top of it to feel free to use a personal Facebook account over Tor network, puts them in the mindset of typing personally identifiable messages, even becoming trackable down to how many errors a person makes and hits Backspace key. Imagine people typing messages under a pseudonym on a forum anonymously in a couple tabs besides the Facebook/Twitter tab, and writing with the same mental personality in mind.
I think this reply now feels a little more apt.
I just ran TBB and used deviceinfo.me to verify, what JS vs noJS can reveal. Here, JS reveals all this information, noJS does not.
Can the author explain me why keeping JS on is so helpful, if your goals go beyond basic privacy expectations?
You want to know what a JS enabled Tor Browser looks like? A standard Firefox private mode tab with uBlock Origin medium mode and arkenfox user.js applied.
Edit: I forgot to address this one
may I ask why? I generally agree with the sentiment of the article but I donāt have a very strong opinion on this and maybe Iām missing something. PS I donāt think the usual āI will end up in a list of people who use Torā argument is a valid one.
People have a habit of typing stuff where they should not, and using literally something like a personal Facebook account over Tor and typing PII should have no opinion other than that it can be risky. All the above information I mentioned is trackable for even a single JS script allowed, and any website where you have such a personal account likely is not a very privacy respecting entity that will allow you to live JS free.
Thereās generally nothing wrong with logging in to ārealā accounts over Tor.
Tor Browser intelligently isolates your traffic so logging in to your ārealā Facebook while doing secret stuff on a different website is not correlate-able via traffic patterns.
It also isolates local state (like cookies) so it wonāt leak that way.
I found this problematic. He is encouraging the use of PII accounts over Tor, which is a very risky thing to do for someone not familiar with how to make and stick to an OPSEC.
A lot of his advice is actually what I practice and preach, but this and the JavaScript one makes me feel less confident here. Preferring JavaScript stay disabled is a better choice, the next best is only allowing JavaScript when needed momentarily. This is why TailsOS which ships with a uBlock Origin Tor Browser is more helpful.
That article is a⦠bit conflating in terms of privacy and anonymity. The whole idea of a VPN has been discarded by the writer just because there is a paywall around it. People can use it for using SaaS like games, streaming platforms to acquire contextual anonymity and/or security.
A very popular use is for torrenting as well, and some trackers do not like same IP being abused by many people, so IP range blocks also exist. VPNs help bypass those as well.
The capitalists have taken away my wealth, and put me in debt. What must we do, comrade?
It is a confidential, random official source. š³š¤«