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Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by j45 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:23AM (#47614927)
Ad blockers focus on ads, not fingerprinting.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by ronjouch on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:28AM (#47615001)
"Ad blockers" nowadays do much more. From the horse’s mouth, which describes itself as a “wide-spectrum content blocker” [1]:

“uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory-efficient wide-spectrum content blocker for Chromium and Firefox. It blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups, annoying anti-blockers, malware sites, etc., by default using EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's Blocklist, Online Malicious URL Blocklist, and uBO filter lists. There are many other lists available to block even more [...]

Ads, "unintrusive" or not, are just the visible portion of the privacy-invading means entering your browser when you visit most sites. uBO's primary goal is to help users neutralize these privacy-invading methods in a way that welcomes those users who do not wish to use more technical means.”

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock?tab=readme-ov-file#ublock-...

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by newsoftheday on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:13AM (#47615567)
I'd like to install uBlock Origin, when I try, Chrome warns it needs the permission to, "Read and change all your data on all websites". That seems excessive, to give that much power to one extension. I currently use no extensions to keep my security posture high.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by garciansmith on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:24AM (#47615723)
I never get the fear behind extensions, at least not to the level where you wouldn't use an open-source extension that's extremely well vetted. And even if that isn't good enough for you, choosing to browse the web without using a content blocker is a far, far greater security risk.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by Sohcahtoa82 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @12:30PM (#47616658)
> "Read and change all your data on all websites"

What a silly complaint. How is an ad blocker supposed to work if it can't read and change the data on a website?

You might as well complain that your Camera app wants access to your camera.

> I currently use no extensions to keep my security posture high.

Ironically, skipping uBlock Origin because of the security concern is lessening your security posture. Are you familiar with the term "malvertising"?

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by j45 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @03:04PM (#47618766)
Appreciate the clarification, I would clarify to say the origin story of Ad blockers are ads, and the underlying behaviours may not capture everything that fingerprinting may do where people don't advertise.

Ublock is great, but I am finding fingerprinting that gets past it and that's what I'm referring to.

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by mewmewblobcat on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:24AM (#47614939)
Depends on what lists you use. If you use uBlock Origin, and enable most of the lists, it'll target both.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by big_toast on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:00AM (#47615407)
According to the EFF fingerprinting website, Firefox + uBlock Origin didn't really make my browser particularly unique.

But turning on privacy.resistfingerprinting in about:config (or was it fingerprintingProtection?) would break things randomly (like 3D maps on google for me. maybe it's related to canvas API stuff?) and made it hard to remember why things weren't working.

Not really sure how to strike a balance of broad convenience vs effectiveness these days. Every additional hoop is more attrition.

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by Scoundreller on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:27AM (#47614987)
> Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser

I thought uBlock Origin was now dead in Chrome?

I remember a few hacks to keep it going but have now migrated to Firefox (or sometimes Edge…) to keep using it.

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by ronjouch on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:30AM (#47615037)
Full uBlock Origin is dead in Chrome, yes, but https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home is the next best thing if you cannot leave Chrome
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by idbnstra on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:03AM (#47615442)
or Vivaldi is chrome based, and it supports full uBlock Origin. If you don't need CHROME chrome, that's even better imo
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by qilo on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:55AM (#47615342)
Surprisingly full uBO still works on Chrome 146 if launched with the argument

    --disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by j45 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:26AM (#47614961)
Go try it with fingerprint.com. Even post-sanitization, pi-hole, you name it, it will be surprising.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by streetfighter64 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:50AM (#47615267)
fingerprint.com seems to be some fingerprinting vendor, they don't even offer a demo without logging in. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org is EFFs demo site is non-profit and doesn't require login
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by KeshiaRose on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:36AM (#47615892)
This is the Fingerprint demo page (the page itself is a demo): https://fingerprint.com/demo There's also https://demo.fingerprint.com for use case specific demos and more detail on the API response.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by iso1631 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @11:22AM (#47615699)
coveryoutracks always tells me I'm unique

Which is concerning. Until you realise I do the same thing a few days later and I'm still unique.

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by mrguyorama on Thursday April 02, 2026 @12:52PM (#47616940)
It tells you that you have a unique fingerprint.

It is not telling you that the test site has never seen you before, because the eff isn't storing your fingerprint for later analysis and tracking

It could actually tell you about which real tracking vendors are showing you as "Seen and tracked" so it's pretty annoying they don't do that.

If that site shows you as having a unique fingerprint, I guarantee you are being tracked across the web. I've seen the actual systems in usage, not the sales pitch. I've seen how effective these tools are, and I haven't even gotten a look at what Google or Facebook have internally. Even no name vendors that don't own the internet can easily track you across any site that integrates with them.

The fingerprint is just a set of signals that tracking providers are using to follow you across the internet. It's per machine for the most part, but if you have ever purchased something on the internet, some of the providers involved will have information like your name.

Here is what Google asks ecommerce platforms to send them as part of a Fraud Prevention integration using Recaptcha:

https://docs.cloud.google.com/recaptcha/docs/reference/rest/...

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by iso1631 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @02:31PM (#47618323)
It must store the fingerprints to determine if I'm unique, otherwise everyone would be unique.

If it doesn't store the fingerprints then how does it tell the difference between

5 identical looking browsers connecting from 5 different IPs

1 browser connecting 5 times from 5 different IPs

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by streetfighter64 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @06:45PM (#47621164)
> the EFF isn't storing your fingerprint for later analysis and tracking

Yes they are, quoting that very page:

> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 312,935 tested in the past 45 days

So clearly they store the information for at least 45 days. This raises the question what they actually mean by unique. If I change my IP and re-test, I get the same

> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 312,941 tested in the past 45 days

So does that mean that my fingerprint changed, and they can't track me anymore? Or do they mean to tell me that they still track me and I'm still as uniquely identified.

Their methodology and linked articles does not seem to answer this [0] [1]

It's all very complicated, because the fingerprinting needs to be unique enough to identify you while still being "persistent" enough not to identify you as somebody else if you change just one bit of it.

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-the...

[1] https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/about

Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by Fogest on Thursday April 02, 2026 @01:25PM (#47617365)
I have a lot of browser extensions running and am using Brave as my browser. I have their built in adblocker enabled as well as some of their privacy features turned on in the settings. I am also using a self hosted adblock instance for my DNS servers. I actually appear as random and not unique which is really nice to see. I know Brave does intentionally lean on some of the privacy side of things and it also has options to specifically prevent sites from fingerprinting by blocking things like seeing language preferences. I have to assume it is also doing some things in the backend to try and prevent other fingerprinting methods.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by dcdc123 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @12:23PM (#47616541)
I use uBlock Origin with basically every filter list enabled on Brave with their default blocker enabled. I just confirmed that this does not prevent the script from loading and scanning extensions. The browser tools network tab on LinkedIn is absolutely frightening.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by autoexec on Thursday April 02, 2026 @01:22PM (#47617319)
NoScript will prevent that script from loading and scanning extensions. JS is required for almost all fingerprinting and malware spread via websites. Keeping it disabled, at least by default, is the best thing you can do to protect yourself.
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by nickburns on Thursday April 02, 2026 @10:26AM (#47614967)
Is there a meaningful difference?
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by throwawayq3423 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @12:37PM (#47616751)
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by autoexec on Thursday April 02, 2026 @01:19PM (#47617279)
Disable JS and you've eliminated the vast majority of fingerprinting (besides "blocks JS")
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by j45 on Thursday April 02, 2026 @03:05PM (#47618778)
alternatively, css can script quite a bit... :)
Re:LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer by autoexec on Thursday April 02, 2026 @03:26PM (#47619036)
No joke, CSS has gotten out of hand!