[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [tor-talk] Privacy Badger



sg.info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> Hi guys and girls,
> are there security issues using the privacy badger from eff.org with the tor browser ? 
> Or: Is there are a need to use privacy badger or is this utility dispensable ?

The filters in use by Privacy Badger are fingerprintable - it is
possible for sites to determine that you have it installed.

In general, Tor Browser is opposed to adblockers, censorship lists, and
related filters, since they are trivial for a dedicated adversary to
bypass, and also distract from our mission of protecting from
fingerprinting and tracking threats through altering the browser to
provide real privacy by design. See also point 5 under:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#philosophy

At the end of the day though, it is up to the user to decide if they
want to incur the fingerprinting hit of installing such filters. This
unfortunately has its own problems, since there are so many of these
types of filtering addons (and even different blacklist subscription
feeds for those addons) that they probably ultimately end up fragmenting
the userbase quite a bit in total.

Still, I also don't think that there's any reason to believe that even
if we shipped Tor Browser with "the one true block everything adblocker"
that userbase fragmentation wouldn't happen anyway. Many people would
still install one or more additional filters for various reasons, if
nothing else than because of personal preferences. Others may end up
disabling filters (or subsets of them) because they break random stuff
(if they could even figure that out).

The only way to win the blacklist game is not to play it, I'm afraid.


-- 
Mike Perry

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

-- 
tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change other settings go to
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk