[tor-talk] The Fight Against Browser FingerPrinting & Creating New Firefox Release for Non-Tor usage based on Tor Browser bundle

[Victor Garin]

The Fight Against Browser FingerPrinting & Creating New Firefox Release for
Non-Tor usage based on Tor Browser bundle

This post will be cross-posted to the blog where it was stated that Tor
Button will soon merge with the Firefox and it won't be a stand-alone add-on
anymore.

I don't understand what each setting does in Tor Button as it is too
complicated in the settings.

For example:

Resize windows to multiples of 50px during Tor usage etc.

All I know that the default settings that ship with the Browser bundle is
good, and that it stop Browser Fingerprinting, protects your privacy, and
more secure, and has better privacy features built in, compared to regular
versions of Firefox.

One thing that will help in the fight against browser fingerprinting, is
releasing the Firefox version as shipped in Tor Browser bundle, which can be
used without tor.

What I mean is, right now I use my regular ISP for browsing, because it is
fast.

If I decided to use the Tor Bundle, I will need to make changes so as to
satisfy my daily browsing needs, such as enabling Flash videos etc. And the
proxy settings to make it direct connection.

What I would like is for Tor Project to release a fork of the Tor Browser
bundle, which only contains the Firefox part.

When I ran some fingerprinting checks on https://panopticlick.eff.org/ , the
things I noticed most is that:

a. Time Zone = 0

in regular Firefox it reveals my Time Zone = 420

(probably too much resistance at Mozilla/Bugzilla to make it 0 for
everybody?)

b. Screen Size and Color Depth = 1000x400x24

in regular Firefox it reveals my real Resolution = 1024x600x24

(probably too much resistance at Mozilla/Bugzilla to remove this info  for
everybody?)

Oh and I have still not figured out how to install Flash plugin in the Tor
Bundle.

If you go to Add-ons ==> Plugins, there is no flash, or other plugins.

There is however Google Talk Plugin. I wonder how it got into the Browser
Bundle.

But all other plugins in my regular Firefox, are not in the Browser Bundle.

I have not bothered with tinkering with any Tor Browser Button settings,
just so it can play flash videos, after all it is going to be a horrible
wait to stream Youtube, for example.

Oh and each time the Tor Browser Bundle is updated, I have to re-install
Ad-block plus and my other Add-ons.

I do NOT use No Script because it is too confusing.

Anyways the point I am trying to make here is that if Tor or EFF released a
Firefox version that helped with the fight against Browser Fingerprinting,
it would be great.

I see that the fight against Browser Fingerprinting is fought mainly when
using Tor Bundle.

The Firefox devs are probably hesitant to implement stuff required to fight
Browser Fingerprinting as according to them, it takes away for the "browsing
experience".

That attitude is wrong.

Say after you release a version of Firefox that has better techniques to
fight against Browser Fingerprinting, I would hope that the Firefox devs
would atleast consider adding a Check Box in the Options where a user can
say Yes I want to join the fight against Browser Fingerprinting. If everyone
has the same fingerprint (which will never happen due to various browsers
for one thing), you will have eradicated the thing that is browser
fingerprinting
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