Open research, stronger privacy: Making Firefox users harder to fingerprint

Re:Open research, stronger privacy: Making Firefox users har... by idbehold on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:15AM (#50454428)

I'd like to have some of the APIs that read the data used to fingerprint browsers be behind a confirmation dialog per site similar to allowing popups or microphone/video access.

> Oh, I see that you'd like to read the canvas pixel data, let me check if that's okay with the user first.

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Re:Open research, stronger privacy: Making Firefox users har... by ThePowerOfFuet on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:30AM (#50454587)

HTML5 canvas data access has been behind such a permission dialog on Firefox (at least on desktop) for a long time now.

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Re:Open research, stronger privacy: Making Firefox users har... by idbehold on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:47AM (#50454790)

I'm on desktop Firefox v160.0 and I've never seen a permission dialog like that and under settings I see:

    Permissions
    Manage what websites can access, control, or trigger.
    
        Location
        Camera
        Device apps and services
        Local network devices
        Microphone
        Speaker
        Notifications
        Autoplay
        Virtual reality

None of those seem to be for accessing canvas data.

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Re:Open research, stronger privacy: Making Firefox users har... by deltoidmaximus on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:13PM (#50455833)

Not sure what my settings are but I've definitely seen the pop up at browse time "Website wants to access canvas data" or similar with a decline option. It might be under the umbrella of settings changed by setting Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict.

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