There are numerous strategies and tools that savvy users employ to protect their personal information while browsing. But for most regular folk, browser add-ons and similar extra setups are just too complicated or too much hassle (if they think about it at all). This is why the best solutions are those in the standard browser install. Despite inherent conflicts of interest (virtually all major browser makers are at least partially funded by ad networks), we do see some nice evolutionary improvements in browser privacy controls. The latest, in the Google Chrome dev channel, is a new setting called 'Click to Play' which keeps plug-ins on web pages disabled until you click on an object that needs the plug-in started. Since I like to keep Chrome on the Stable or Beta channels, I'm using Chromium for this test:  As discussed previously, this has both privacy and performance advantages (particularly on mobile and portable devices). To enable Click to Play, navigate to Chrome/Chromium Preferences > Under the Hood > Content Settings > Plug-ins > Click to Play, and check the box. Click to Play doesn't solve all privacy problems, but in addition to improving performance, it does reduce the number of cookies (of several varieties) that sites place on your device and (in conjunction with other basic defenses) reduce the overall trackability of your casual surfing behavior. Aside from cookies, Click to Play has another limited benefit: reducing browser entropy (the uniqueness of the signature that your browser presents to web servers). | ||
With Click to Play enabled, my fingerprint entropy drops by several bits. The key areas that typically compromise the most uniqueness are User Agent, Browser Plugin Details, and System Fonts. The Chromium User Agent tends to be pretty unique, but even Firefox and the other major browsers have many variations. Click to Play doesn't block native plugins, so there is some unavoidable entropy there, but Click to Play does significantly reduce the entropy presented by System Fonts, since fonts are detected via Flash and/or Java (turning off Java and using a Flash blocker will achieve a comparable result).
Most users have no idea how much information about them and their systems get compromised to web servers every day... collected, stored, aggregated, used, and abused. Good persistent storage (e.g., cookie) controls are just the beginning. Chrome does provide a number of powerful Content Settings, but defaults matter. A lot.
My recommendations to all browser makers to regain the trust of users in the present privacy-challenged environment are:
- Improve basic cookie controls to include all forms of persistent storage. Block all 3rd-party storage by default. Allow whitelists for opt-in persistence.
- Implement more aggressive persistence management to thwart "evercookies".
- Reduce browser entropy with simplified User Agent signatures.
- In conjunction with reputable ad networks, implement Do Not Track HTTP headers.
| The web desperately needs more trust, and better support for individual privacy. It probably won't get there without regulation, but there's a slim chance if prominent industry players move past traditional approaches and meaningless "opt out" regimes. |
