Chrome's private browsing is broken
This defeats the purpose of Incognito. If any website is able to tell you're browsing in private mode, then the browser is leaking data that shows it's not private
Here's the article I was viewing. No, I will not turn off private browsing for any reason. I'll avoid visiting your site if I have to https://archive.fo/2GDSE
@cypnk i have never used these modes
i have wondered how they differ from my normal FF setup running anti-tracking (privacybadger), extensive adblocking (ublock origin), and manual cookie whitelisting (denies cookie by default)?
i know incognito mode deletes history when you quit...
@alyx The number of plugins you have also increases your attack surface. uBlock and Privacy Badger are brought to you by the Good Guys(tm), but they still add to the risk that one of these can be compromised at some point
Ideally, the browser itself will have this functionality built in, but with the exception of "Brave" browser, I don't know of any others that do
@cypnk re-reading your comment i don't think you were exclusively referring to the fingerprint issue re: increased attack surface
to that point, i wonder how FF's massive add-on infrastructure revamp will affect size of attack surface. i don't know about that.
@alyx I don't use FF for casual browsing these days; Only dev work so I do need quite a few plugins
In Chrome these are currently installed:
uBlock Origin
Privacy Badger
HTTPS Everywhere and
Disable HTML5 Autoplay
@alyx I think the hiccups should be ironed out pretty soon. They've been announcing webextensions for quite some time, so I'm sure they're already working on a stable version that doesn't try HTTPS on everything
@cypnk yes, HTTPS E WE for FF is in the works. just mentioned cuz i've been going through that WE status worksheet today
@cypnk mm. i use HTTPS Everywhere as well
(it's not ready for FF57 yet, but there is a webextension alternative that tries to indiscriminately use HTTPS on every site (vs. HTTPS E's whitelist approach))
i guess i will investigate incognito / private browsing to better understand them