cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/4000823
And by burned, I mean “realize they have been burning for over a year”. I’m referring to a bug in the Tor Browser flatpak that prevented the launcher from updating the actual browser, despite the launcher itself updating every week or so. The fix requires manual intervention, and this was never communicated to users. The browser itself also doesn’t alert the user that it is outdated. The only reason I found out today was because the NoScript extension broke due to the browser being so old.
To make matters worse, the outdated version of the browser that I had, differs from the outdated version reported in the Github thread. In other words, if you were hoping that at least everybody affected by the bug would be stuck at the same version (and thus have the same fingerprint), that doesn’t seem to be the case.
This is an extreme fingerprinting vulnerability. In fact I checked my fingerprint on multiple websites, and I had a unique fingerprint even with javascript disabled. So in other words, despite following the best privacy and security advice of:
- using Tor Browser
- disabling javascript
- keeping software updated
My online habits have been tracked for over a year. Even if Duckduckgo or Startpage doesn’t fingerprint users, Reddit sure does (to detect ban evasions, etc), and we all know 90% of searches lead to Reddit, and that Reddit sells data to Google. So I have been browsing the web for over a year with a false sense of security, all the while most of my browsing was linked to a single identity, and that much data is more than enough to link it to my real identity.
How was I supposed to catch this? Manually check the About page of my browser to make sure the number keeps incrementing? Browse the Github issue tracker before bed? Is all this privacy and security advice actually good, or does it just give people a false sense of security, when in reality the software isn’t maintained enough for those recommendations to make a difference? Sorry for the rant, it’s just all so tiring.
Edit: I want to clarify that this is not an attack on the lone dev maintaining the Tor Browser flatpak. They mention in the issue that they were fairly busy last year. I just wanted to know how other people handled this issue.
Tor “installed” via non-flatpak updates via the same manual mechanism, so it’s no worse than the non-flatpak. The flatpak is just the installer. Also, the point of tor is not to avoid fingerprinting, it’s to blend in. You are no more tracked by Reddit than you would be with up to date tor. A publicly traded company is not going to actively try to exploit your browser with a hack to fingerprint you extra via an exploit. You should never use tor for 1-1 you things comingled with anything you don’t want associated with you. That’s why there’s an easy to use new identity button. Tor is not magic, its on YOU to engage in best practices or not.
Fingerprinting and blending in are the same thing. You can’t blend in if you have a unique fingerprint. The Tor Project goes to great lengths to mitigate fingerprinting using their custom browser, it’s one of their main goals. It’s pointless to use Tor with a regular browser that doesn’t have those protections, because websites can just identify you by your fingerprint even when you are obfuscating your IP using Tor.
Browser version is a major part of your fingerprint. It’s in your user agent, but that can be faked so there are additional mechanisms that check what javascript features your browser supports to get a more reliable read of your browser version. Use https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ to learn more.
And fingerprinting is not a hack or exploit. It’s something that websites use for tracking, just like cookies. And I’m almost certain that Reddit fingerprints users to detect ban evasions.