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Do those "dark mode" addons for web browsers create a privacy/fingerprinting vulnerability?
(hexbear.net)
I covered the windows in my room and use a dark theme for everything I can and have become a sort of cave creature in the process, and Its gotten to the point where I have to actively avoid using many websites because the white background causes physical pain in my eyes. I use the cromite browser on my phone and am a fan of the dark theme it applies to most sites, and was wondering if using an addon like that on librewolf would sacrifice any of its resistance to fingerprinting.
Yes, in the way every addon does. Even something as simple as having your browser in full screen would be enough to let someone know what resolution monitor you're using and thus give them one more detail of your digital fingerprint. I can't imagine you really need to worry about that however.
I don't think you need to be in full screen for your browser to telegraph your screen resolution. This also oncludes framerate, graphics driver, graphics hardware, and much more. You'd have to disable Javascript. Javascript is a privacy nightmare.
yeah I guess its not worth worrying about too much.
It is growing more common for operating systems to implement light/dark themes across the board. This is present in modern Windows, GNOME, and Android (at least), and this is made available to the browser, which makes it available to websites you visit. A lot of websites will automatically change between light and dark mode depending on what setting you have chosen at the OS level. While this is still an additional point which can be used for fingerprinting, it is a lot more common for people to set dark mode at the OS level than it is for people to install hyper-specific greasemonkey scripts. At least you'll blend in with a larger pool of users.
pretty sure librewolf blocks sites from reading the os color scheme. ended up just going with the midnight lizard extension and seems to be working well enough. while I do value my privacy I value not experiencing eye pain a little more.
which itself is another bit of identifying data: "this user responded 'shut up' to the theme question"
the modern internet is a privacy nightmare
The best way to be more private online is to use the TOR browser (as-is, dont add a bunch of add ons). Millions of people use it so fingerprinting is mostly useless, and Javascript is partly disabled by default (this is the secret sauce) plus it has the same list of built-in add ons as everyone else. On top of that it uses the Tor protocol, which is a little slow for streaming video or whatever but it's fine for basic browsing.
Downside is a lot of websites break without Javascript so it's a big annoyance, but if you're doing something you specifically want to be less traceable, then Tor browser is great.
This doesn't outweigh bad opsec though. If you're logged into Google, Microsoft, or Amazon, they don't even need to fingerprint you because you're identifying yourself.