ironic how this is posted below an article that says that testing websites are not reliable and that you should not read into the results unless you understand them

Turns out, he is not talking about the kind of people I fit in. I am using Tor for more than a decade at this point, and have been a very avid I2P torrent user as well since many years. If not the same, I compare pretty well in experience in this aspect.

He is talking about the kind of people who open Panopticon for fingerprint tests and misread the fractions and decimal numbers and information there when comparing, and then scream on reddit with misinterpreted posts aimed to get awards and upvotes at the cost of sanity of many people.

deviceinfo.me is not the kind of site and data used for demonstrations he is talking about. I have a fair amount of experience to make this claim.

To expand on the attacks that are mitigated, avoidance is a better measure than mitigation. Hence the reason why I say noJS is a better policy, the next best is turning on JS manually when needed. Keeping JS on all the time is a fool’s errand if they want to go beyond standard levels of privacy and anonymity. The author himself mentions in the last line as a subtle disclaimer why it can be a choice.

You know how gait movements IRL work? Turns out, Google Recaptcha makes very good use of how you move and click with cursor on the captcha boxes. If you thought AI/ML image training was the only thing Google was making users do, now you know something new.

You want to know what a JS enabled Tor Browser looks like? A standard Firefox private mode tab with uBlock Origin medium mode and arkenfox user.js applied.

that’s simply not true. TB has further enhancement and code changes, it is based on ESR plus it’s not the same as a private window at all since private mode does not write to disk for example. most importantly tho: TB has crowd and the Tor network

Firefox has a bigger userbase than Tor Browser users, and it is a pretty uncontested claim logically. Firefox has Tor Project’s code for anti fingerprinting and per site data isolation upstreamed to Firefox’s private browsing mode since the past 15-20 or so versions now.

usability, a browser with JS disabled by default is not a good everyday browser for most. the more people use Tor Browser daily and have a good experience with it, the larger the crowd gets.

Does that not make the argument for Firefox stronger for regular daily browsing usage, since it has an even bigger userbase? You can use uBlock Origin and you can enjoy Tor Browser’s dFPI and per site data isolation benefits in Firefox’s private browsing mode.

I also don’t get what the difference between typing private stuff on facebook on tor or behind a vpn or on your ISP’s network is.

You missed where I said how having JS on means you are keylogged easily. Your caps lock is also detectable, just to be clear. You are also forgetting that making strings out of this keylogged stuff, and then applying stylometry analysis is a very easy and cost effective way into unmasking identities behind pseudonyms. I do this myself regularly as part of OSINT investigations. It is how I have also unmasked many sockpuppets on Lemmy, Matrix, Reddit in the past few years.

The author has a very agreeable position with me on what he speaks, but it is like how anti-imperialist viewpoints sound very correct in today’s political scenario, but every single nuance does not have to be perfect to get the idea across. He is getting the idea across here, and that is why you are arguing at length with me.

Edit: I think this explanation is lacking. I must expand on it.

First I will get out of the way elements that can be spoofed with JS on:

• browser build number, country and GPS coordinates, CPU cores, user agents

Now it is time to address elements which having JS on reveals. Feel free to correct me whatever is spoofed by Tor Browser.

• OS Core
• multiple nameserver connections, resolved and unresolved
• private/incognito mode
• tracking protection on or off
• browser window size
• monitor colour depth support
• current page scroll position
• current mouse cursor position
• last key pressed (keylogging)
• caps lock on or off
• last cursor clicked position on page
• estimation of your connection speed using page load time, network time, DNS lookup time, TCP connection time, server load time, page download time, browser load time

Monitor colour depth support may not be a significant issue, as many have standard monitors.

Can you explain me how these are spoofed in Tor Browser while having JS on? I have ignored the fonts as those are spoofed, and there are no timing attack vectors in this list. The last bullet point, if you want to talk about, can be used to identify if someone used a really fast connection ISP at an unusual place and time.

Nameserver connections can be a possible issue with exit node identification, if we are to assume the OPSEC of an average journalist just downloading and using Tor Browser on any machine. If we assume relays can protect them, we have other vectors here, like…

… page scroll and mouse cursor positions, caps lock on or off, last key pressed.

Keylogging, as explained earlier, is a very cost effective way to unmask people. Telling people on top of it to feel free to use a personal Facebook account over Tor network, puts them in the mindset of typing personally identifiable messages, even becoming trackable down to how many errors a person makes and hits Backspace key. Imagine people typing messages under a pseudonym on a forum anonymously in a couple tabs besides the Facebook/Twitter tab, and writing with the same mental personality in mind.

I think this reply now feels a little more apt.