Pale Moon forum

Hello all. I have a curious question. So today I was curious on what info Pale Moon was giving to web sites upon request
and I found this web site.
http://mybrowserinfo.com/detail.asp?bhcp=1

And it gave me these results. It surprised me that it was telling them what Operating system I was using. I would like to stop that if possible.
I realize that web pages need a certain amount of info just to show the page right but is there a way to minimize
this exposure to the max minimum's?

It seems to me that after all the other add on's and using a VPN there are still ways to fingerprint a person this way.

I believe the Operating System information only comes from the user-agent string. You can try setting "general.useragent.override" to your current user-agent minus anything about the operating system (in your case, remove the "Windows NT 5.1;").

As adisib say, the OS info come from your useragent.
You can modify that string of course but *can* get then problems with websites.

Well I decided to give this a try.
Random Agent Spoofer 0.9.1-signed

It allows me to choose which strings to use and which ones to exclude.
So I just picked all the FF 20 and above and all the Pale Moon ones.

I can turn it off on the fly if needed.

Remember: Use random useragents make you more unique which makes you more trackable.
And just change the useragent string doesn't make real difference because with JavaScript the site can check your real useragent.

So you have better privacy without that.

Whats a problem with os? Other browsers gives that information too. And there are advanced methods of os detection irrespective of the userganet string. See http://www.browserleaks.com/firefox

Fedor2 wrote:Whats a problem with os? Other browsers gives that information too. And there are advanced methods of os detection irrespective of the userganet string. See http://www.browserleaks.com/firefox

Yup, I got that covered too.

dark_moon wrote:Remember: Use random useragents make you more unique which makes you more trackable.
And just change the useragent string doesn't make real difference because with JavaScript the site can check your real useragent.

So you have better privacy without that.

Not sure how that makes me more unique
Perhaps you could explain a bit and enlighten me

As for JavaScript, that's what Noscript is for.

OS Platform and Locale are not worthwhile identifiable information.. As for reading the preference files.. Well.. What we could do is simply rename the files in omnija and adjust code that looks for those preferences js files.. That would make it so that this tool couldn't find the files with a resource uri call..

Matt A Tobin wrote:OS Platform and Locale are not worthwhile identifiable information..

I'm not sure I would agree. I mean, if I was using Chrome and W7 then I would agree.
But let's face it. How many folks out there are using XP and Pale Moon at the same time.
I just feel like that narrows it down quite a bit.

You could label me a schizophrenic paranoid freak and you would probably be close...

How many folks out there are using XP and Pale Moon at the same time

Quite enough i say.

Suppose you already hidden your IP, you must know about other things beside os, that distinguish you. From overall screen dimensions to begin with, to taskbar size, which on xp is differ from win7.

Fedor2 wrote:

How many folks out there are using XP and Pale Moon at the same time

Quite enough i say.

Suppose you already hidden your IP, you must know about other things beside os, that distinguish you. From overall screen dimensions to begin with, to taskbar size, which on xp is differ from win7.

Yes I know, but I was comparing to the likes of W7 and Chrome. All those things you mention have been dealt with.

I suggest you all go through this: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/18/a-comp ... -settings/. Though a lot of it we don't even have, so you might want to take advantage of Find.

Thehandyman1957 wrote:

dark_moon wrote:Remember: Use random useragents make you more unique which makes you more trackable.
And just change the useragent string doesn't make real difference because with JavaScript the site can check your real useragent.

So you have better privacy without that.

Not sure how that makes me more unique
Perhaps you could explain a bit and enlighten me

As for JavaScript, that's what Noscript is for.

A example: You use your Pale Moon setup with your settings & addons with default useragent which include the Firefox compatibility mode: you are more unique then users with default Pale Moon settings, maybe you the only the ones with that setup then you are unique and can be easy trackable because no other users have that *ID*
If you now use another useragent, for example chrome you are definite unique because no chrome user have that setup.
So a website with normal useragent see you use chrome and give you chrome specific content which can't be displayed in Pale Moon- you get errors. Or the site uses JavaScript (yes NoScript protect you, but only until you allow JavaScript) and make more tests to test your real useragent and see you use Pale Moon/ Firefox.
Short: You *can* get website problems and change the useragent will make you more unique, also more trackable because of the current setup which create your ID.

The only way to be less unique is using default browser without any settings, addons, nothing.

Hope that make it more clear

LimboSlam wrote:I suggest you all go through this: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/18/a-comp ... -settings/. Though a lot of it we don't even have, so you might want to take advantage of Find.

I suggest you don't tweak the browser to the point of breaking. The list there has a good number of settings that make Pale Moon most definitely underperform, be crippled in some ways, and are certainly never recommended. I dare also say that I won't be inclined at all to provide much support for people who run into issues because they have (unknowingly) disabled features they want to have.

There is no "way to stop Pale Moon from giving out information" because it is a web client. Web clients have to give out information to servers to indicate what web client it is. Web servers make use of the (non-personal) information contained in web requests and query-able from the browser itself to present responsive sites (and no I'm not talking about this responsive design for mobile stuff).
Giving web servers false information can break your web experience in all sorts of ways.

Now that I look at exactly what that site cites as info it can gather.. Especially from default preferences.. And yes it is only default preferences (which live in the source code) no settings in your user profile are exposed as they are not gotten via resources uri. I really can't see what value any of this information would have to anyone.

Strange thread.
If we were to browse totally incognito then the web would not work correctly.Personally i dont have a problem with websites knowing what operating system i use or what architecture it is and i see no problems with this.
No personally identifiable information is ever stored on my machine or sent in a browser.(except my approximate location i suppose.).
Bank details cannot be retrieved etc so i dont see any immediate risk or danger.
Maybe paranoia is the main issue here and we have certain physicians for this cripplling internet disease.

Moonraker wrote:Strange thread.
Maybe paranoia is the main issue here and we have certain physicians for this cripplling internet disease.

LOL Now that's funnny Perhaps I need some chair time

Moonchild wrote: Giving web servers false information can break your web experience in all sorts of ways.

Yes, I learned my lesson long ago not to mess to much with the nuts and bolts of things.

I have messed up Xp several times listening to web pages like that.

And I saw yesterday first hand how the spoofing can mess up a web page.

When it comes to User Agents (not really the primary issue here) we have enough issues being our selves vs pretending to be Firefox.. Spoofing something else.. Say Chrome or IE is just asking for trouble.

Also, let me restate again.. The resource URI items such as the default preferences (greprefs, firefox.js, firefox-branding.js) continue to be exactly that.. Default preferences as defined in our source code. Profile prefs.js (the one in your profile directory) is not accessible from a resource uri.