Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How does one browser (Orion) know what I'm doing on another browser (Safari)? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm on MacOS and typically use Safari as my main browser. I have several other browsers installed on my computer which I use for different things or just to try out from time to time. Orion is one I haven't tried in a while.

I've launched Orion and found that when I previously used it I saved some tabs - one of them being Ebay. I am not signed into my Ebay account in Orion but when I open this tab I'm seeing "Your Recently Viewed Items" and it's very much showing me the items I viewed in Safari just moments earlier.

Orion promotes itself as a privacy focused web browser.

Privacy by design, like no other browser.
Orion has been engineered from ground up as a truly privacy-respecting browser. We did it by embracing a simple principle - Orion is a zero telemetry browser. Your private information will never leave Orion by default.
And to protect your privacy on the web, Orion comes with industry-leading anti-tracking technology as well as a powerful built-in ad-blocker.

How does one browser know what the other browser is doing regardless if I'm, signed into my account on a particular website?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Orion actually goes out of its way to block fingerprinting by default, this is most likely it importing Safari data as a starting point since it's also WebKit based.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

IMO It's practically impossible to "block" fingerprinting, as anything that you do block can be tested for and used against you as yet another data point for your fingerprint. You can even fingerprint someone by TLS alone, no html/css/js needed, which CloudFlare uses on a massive scale to great success, unfortunately.

Even anti-fingerprint tactics that use fake/random/lying data can also be tested for (if nothing else heuristically), which tools like creepjs absolutely do make use of and it can accurately detect most such techniques.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's terrifying how effective user tracking is today, and I think most people are really unaware of how extensive it is.

Prof. Jennifer Golbeck explains it well (for non-technical folks) in "Taking Control of Your Personal Data" published by The Teaching Company, ISBN:978-1629978390, likely available at your local library as a DVD or streaming. (I know that sounds like an ad, she just explains things so well I hope more non-technical people will see it).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

My library doesn't even have a single computer-related book :(