Privacy Possum is Privacy Badger on Steroids May 7, 2018 https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/07/privacy-possum-is-privacy-badger-on-steroids/ Privacy Possum Website Install for Chrome / Firefox
Very cool! I see it creates a new fake canvas every time it is called, which I believe isn't as useful as presenting the same fake canvas for each browser session.
On what website are you testing it? If the canvas would change every time, there would also be new PNG Hashes/Image files details after each refresh of the website (see below), but the extension doesn't touch the canvas which can be seen there: https://browserleaks.com/canvas (Extension disabled/enabled makes no difference)
I'm using Privacy Possum in place of Privacy Badger in Firefox. It hasn't caused any issues as far as I can tell. Regarding effectiveness I can't make an in-depth comparison though between it, the Badger, and Ghostery.
It does cause problems, but I guess, that is, what it is designed to do, to break connections with 3rd party sites. Like I had to login to Disqus every time, and when there was a notification from it and I clicked on it, I got an error. I have got rid of it after a while. Not sure, if it does anything, there is no way to test it, it just show numbers and that is it. EDIT: (I need those, so ) blocks (all third-party) cookies that are used to track users.
It looks like Privacy Badger on Steroids is a bad title, since it has different goals than Privacy Badger and other addons like Ghostery(which I would advise against in the first place), uBlock Origin etc. https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum/issues/1
I tried this addon some days ago and liked it, except concerning one point: The way the referer is handled. For what I was able to test, Privacy Possum block the referer, no referer is passed, even from going from a domain to a subdomain. So with this addon activated, I was unable to browse some sites. So I deactivated this addon. For managing referer, I use Smart Referer for years (with option "strict" unchecked and mode "send nothing like a direct hit") and I haven't had any referer issue on any site I have browsed these 5 last years. The way Privacy Possum handles the referer is far not optimal, and there is no option to disable referer management. It's really pity. An other addon with the same kind of problem is Shape Shifter. Interresting addon, but the under optimal way it handles the referer led me to deactivate it. Developers, when you aren't spoofing referer specialist, focus on the other amazing feature you are mastering, and let the referer things be managed by Smart Referer! I haven't specifically tested that, but if you are right, it's an other instance of the problem I spoke about above. Creating new canvas every time it is called is indeed a very bad way to handle canvas. And there already are other addons doing canvas stuff far better, like Canvas Blocker. More and more often are appearing multi purpose addons, doing smart things that no other addon can do, but doing in the same time, without any way to opt-out, sub optimal thing that other existing addons do much more optimally.
Had a look at Trace also ... I think it does the same: 'Trace can protect you by removing these headers, making it look like you came from nowhere'. I use uMatrix which only spoofs the HTTP referrer string of third party requests. Again I think Trace also does this ('Trace randomly generates a new canvas hash every request'). So yes, still using CanvasBlocker ... But haven't really done any investigation of what Trace does that Privacy Possum doesn't and vice versa ...
As long if it is easy to correct things like with Ghostery, it's fine. But I still need to check it out.
On panopticlick privacy possum gives me your browser has a nearly-unique fingerprint. On browserleaks.com I get <canvas> 1.0. What does that mean? and uniqueness 99.97% (88 of 258561 user agents have the same signature). Is that good
I don't know Privacy Possum. But with Canvas Defender spoofing, I get 1/1822979.0 browsers for "Hash of canvas fingerprint". But I can change that canvas fingerprint whenever I like. With Canvas Blocker instead, I get 1/41.47 browsers for "Hash of canvas fingerprint" (which is undefined). So I'm guessing that Privacy Possum is spoofing canvas fingerprint. So just generate a new fake canvas fingerprint whenever you like. About user agent, Privacy Possum might not be spoofing at all, or it might be giving you an unusual one. I'm not spoofing user agent in this VM, and get 1/81.32 browsers for "User Agent" (basically Firefox in Linux). Just for kicks, I added the string "general.useragent.override" to about:config with value "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.99 Safari/537.36". According to https://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-agents/ that's the most common, at 10.6% of all browsers. With that, Panopticlick gives me 1/375.58 browsers for "User Agent". So something isn't right about how Firefox is spoofing that. One other thing. I use VMs, and unless I use them in full-screen mode, I get a rather unique "Screen Size and Color Depth". Just sayin'.
So how do you interpret the Panopticlick user agent number -- is a larger number better -- or a smaller number?
That depends on what you mean by "number" But seriously, 1/10 (one in ten browsers) is less unique aka more anonymous than 1/100 (one in 100 browsers). If all tested browsers had the same user agent (goal for Tor browser) the result would be 1/1.
I hope it's not overkill and duplication but I am sure some of it might be considered is. The thing is, like many of you, and you guys are way better at Browser brakes on ads and junk then a malware/ransomware-Security Proggy tester, i'm using Privacy Possum + Privacy Badger + uBlockOrigin + Ghostery + Canvas Blocker extensions, and so far a not a single serious slowdown at all on my preferred browser-VilValdi.
I'd like to get in on the game with some of these extensions but I just use uBO. I think that it takes care of the ads and trackers etc, fingerprinting though not sure what to use. I have tried a few extensions in the past and they seem to do nothing.
Are you seeing activity on all of them, ie are they all showing a number on their respective icons indicating blocked requests for various sites?
Yes, they all show something and it's taking some time to stop and review what's getting blocked and such but if this is what it takes to get a decent website experience without a pile of junk and trackers jumping all over a browser then they are well worth the run in multiples. Certainly has not slowed down pages and in fact loading is picked up for me compared to before.
