diff --git a/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi b/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi index 021c239..9832aff 100644 --- a/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi +++ b/content/posts/website-best-practices.gmi @@ -42,7 +42,11 @@ It's not a good idea to expect users to automatically override website styleshee ### But wouldn't that allow a website to fingerprint with fonts? -I don't know much about fingerprinting, except that you can't do font enumeration without JavaScript. Since text-based websites that follow these best-practices don't send requests after the page loads and have no scripts, fingerprinting via font enumeration is a non-issue. +I don't know much about fingerprinting, except that you can't do font enumeration without JavaScript. Since text-based websites that follow these best-practices don't send requests after the page loads and have no scripts, fingerprinting via font enumeration is a non-issue on those sites. + +Other websites can still fingerprint via font enumeration using JavaScript. They don't need to stop at seeing what sans-serif maps to; they can see all the available fonts on a user's system, the user's canvas fingerprint, window dimensions, etc. Some of these can be mitigated with Firefox's "privacy.resistFingerprinting" setting, but that setting also understandably overrides user font preferences. + +Ultimately, surveillance self-defense on the web is an arms race full of trade-offs. If you want both privacy and customizability, the web is not the place to look; try Gemini or Gopher instead. ## About lazy loading diff --git a/content/posts/website-best-practices.md b/content/posts/website-best-practices.md index d8f52b9..c4060c9 100644 --- a/content/posts/website-best-practices.md +++ b/content/posts/website-best-practices.md @@ -78,15 +78,25 @@ asserting a personal preference. It's not a good idea to expect users to automatically override website stylesheets. Doing so would break websites that use fonts such as Font Awesome to display vector -icons. We shouldn't expect these users to constantly battle with websites the same way -that many adblocking/script-blocking users (myself included) already do. +icons. We shouldn't expect these users to constantly battle with websites the same +way that many adblocking/script-blocking users (myself included) already do. ### But wouldn't that allow a website to fingerprint with fonts? I don't know much about fingerprinting, except that you can't do font enumeration without JavaScript. Since text-based websites that follow these best-practices don't send requests after the page loads and have no scripts, fingerprinting via font -enumeration is a non-issue. +enumeration is a non-issue on those sites. + +Other websites can still fingerprint via font enumeration using JavaScript. They +don't need to stop at seeing what sans-serif maps to; they can see all the available +fonts on a user's system, the user's canvas fingerprint, window dimensions, etc. Some +of these can be mitigated with Firefox's `privacy.resistFingerprinting` setting, but +that setting also understandably overrides user font preferences. + +Ultimately, surveillance self-defense on the web is an arms race full of trade-offs. +If you want both privacy and customizability, the web is not the place to look; try +Gemini or Gopher instead. About lazy loading ------------------