Cover Your Tracks

[Jason]

Some might recall the tool called 'Panopticlick' mentioned in this forum years ago. It was a project from the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). In 2020, it became 'Cover Your Tracks'. Its purpose is to test how well your web browser blocks trackers and fingerprinting. You can find it here:

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

I wanted to know how Brave would show up. Keep in mind I have changed some browser settings that may have made it more secure. And for fun, I'm comparing it to Chrome (default install) and Firefox (default install). Neither have any extensions installed. With Brave, I have some extensions installed but none are security-related (e.g. Privacy Badger). I'd love to see your results which I assume you guys will have optimized for security. The results are attached below in the order of Brave, Firefox, Chrome.

[Jason]

I added Privacy Badger to Brave, Firefox and Chrome and as expected, the results changed.

Chrome and Firefox changed to Strong protection with no caveats and blocked all trackers. But only Brave had a randomized fingerprint (from the initial test). There's probably an extension to fix that in the other browsers.

I added Privacy Badger to Brave and the only thing that changed was the caveat with Brave's rating of Strong protection about 'do not track'. Because it's hard to improve on 'almost perfect.'

So the sum of the story is that Brave protects your privacy better than Firefox and way better than Chrome. But add Privacy Badger to either Firefox or Chrome and you have very close to the protection that Brave gives you. I'd be interested in the results for LibreWolf. Maybe Bill will check that out for us.

[tommolica]

Hi Jason and everyone: finally found my login credentials!!!
My brave results were same as yours Jason.
I do not know this browser well and is
likely running in stock form.
I am starting to like Brave real well.
Cheers to all, and best of the New Year.

[Jason]

Awesome Tom! It's great when we have more people posting.

Thanks for sharing your Brave result. Btw, if you find the ads intrusive, you can turn them off in Brave Rewards. It's the triangle in the far right of the location bar. Glad you're enjoying Brave. I haven't found a browser I've been this excited about in a long time.

You have a great year, too!

[ssfc72]

Excellent website, Jason, thanks for sharing this privacy testing website.

Here is the website results from the Librewolf browser, on my notebook computer running Mint 20.1

[Jason]

"Your browser has a nearly-unique fingerprint." That's a new one. I thought the only results for that line were 'unique' or 'randomized'. Do you remember what the line above the boxes said? That's the most important part, I think.

Thanks for sharing your results, Bill. Other than that one result, it's nearly as good as Brave. I wonder if adding the privacy extension will fix that, too? You should do a review of Librewolf on the Software board after you've used it for a bit. I had never heard of it until you mentioned it.

[ssfc72]

Ok, here is another screen shot.

[Jason]

Thanks, Bill! So we know now that Librewolf and Brave have stronger protection than Firefox, out of the box.

I tried turning off everything in Chrome that looked it might allow for fingerprinting to see if I could make it safer and it didn't do anything. Installing Privacy Badger fixed it, though. It probably comes as no surprise to everything but Chrome really doesn't respect your privacy even when you try to tell it to.

One of the biggest problems is that Chrome, BY DEFAULT, allows third-party cookies. No other browser I know of does that. That allows you to be tracked across websites by using cookies that are stored by a website other than the one you're actually accessing, usually an ad network. It's almost as if Google is an advertising company.