Firefox 44 removes privacy feature.

[Tim]

On Wed, 2016-02-03 at 10:18 -0700, stan wrote:
> I doubt that you are experiencing traditional cookie tracking.

Hmm, I reckon they probably still do that.

> There are two other ways of tracking that are much more effective:
> flash cookies and html5 storage.

Since I block Flash, by default, few things should abuse me via that
route.  I've not kept up to speed with HTML5, though.  I'll look into
the privacy add-ons you discussed.
> 
> If they exhibit behavior that a tracking site would, it blocks them.
> I can no longer read the site forbes.com because it thinks I have
> adblocker turned on.  I don't, but privacy badger is blocking the ad
> trackers that would allow ads, so they don't show up.

Yes, I see more and more of that kind of thing (sites that deliberately
fail, lock you out, or are utterly scrambled when you block the half
dozen CPU-sapping scripts that they run).  The trouble is, it's not just
odd-ball sites that do that.  You find you can't read the news, buy
stuff on-line from your shops on-line store, etc.  I suspect that's down
to idiot-level turn-key webstore services, which simply make use of a
lot of external pre-programmed scripts, rather than do it all on the
website.

Something as benign as shop.abc.net.au (our national television
broadcasters online sales), is an example of something that goes right
out of kilter when you block all these annoyances.

> Never!, I repeat never!, allow the site addthis.com to access your
> computer.  It uses browser fingerprinting to track your web usage.
> NoScript seems to adequately prevent it, and I think privacybadger has
> it blocked out of the box.

And there's the rub, these days.  Now that dial-up is dying off, many
users have persistent IPs (not quite static, but most likely to keep on
using the same IP).  You can't just block something once it's touched
you, wipe your cache, and be a new anonymous person on your next
session.  And thanks to browsers with tabs, or multiple windows that do
not act like isolated programs, one session can last a very long time,
as you close your window with your bank, but other windows remain open.

I wonder if any browsers have a randomiser in them to jiggle the
tell-tale signs that browser fingerprinting makes use of?

-- 
tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp

Linux 3.19.8-100.fc20.i686 #1 SMP Tue May 12 17:42:35 UTC 2015 i686

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point trying
to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.