this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Hello, smart people. Filling out an online form to volunteer for something, Firefox's Facebook-fence icon appeared on the email field. Confused, I clicked on its question mark. On the next page, Mozilla wanted to sell me Firefox relay for $7/mo. (That's their VPN + email masking + phone masking.) I used my yandex.ru email address instead for $0. Here's the question: is Facebook really able to track me because I've signed up to volunteer for Cornel West (setting aside the FB-Russia blockage issue)? Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I just looked up user agent. If I understand correctly, that changes every time I change browsers. Does it also change every time I clear the cache?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

User agent has quite a few things included, such as browser and operating system, so if you use a different browser, you’ll have a different user agent. The trouble with user agent is that some techniques used to try and make it more anonymous ironically make it easier to track. There’s not really a good option. Although it’s definitely worth getting a user agent switching plugin to disguise yourself as Google bot so you can bypass paywalls

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks. Magnolia does the paywall thing for me. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Some browsers have proprietary APIs that break web standards (see Chrome), and sometimes, workarounds are needed for some browsers. Changing the user agent might break functionality.