this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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LibreWolf

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Welcome to the official community for LibreWolf.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. If you have any question please visit our FAQ first: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/

To learn more or to download the browser visit the website: https://librewolf.net/

If you want to contribute head over to our Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/librewolf

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TranscriptScreenshot of a pop-up. It reads:

Color Inaccuracies Detected.

We have detected that your browser may have issues with color accuracy.

You may notice subtle visual noise and incorrect colors appear in your skins.

This issue is usually caused by anti-fingerprinting privacy settings in your browser.

Learn how to fix [with a hyperlink to a help page]

this screenshot was taken on Miners Need Cooler Shoes

does anyone know what would cause this precisely? why would anti-fingerprinting mess with the colors i use to edit an image in the browser?

i'd be tempted to brush this off as the website being malicious and lying to get me to deactivate fingerprinting protection, but the website is fully open-source and what they describe happened to me on Piskel (a pixel art editor, which would constantly mess up my colors in subtle but annoying ways)

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 52 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

This sent me down a rabbit hole; interesting stuff.

The way I'm understanding this: the way an image is rendered depends on lots of different factors like browser, OS, graphics card etc, plus other bits like fonts and anti-aliasing settings. Each persons set up is unique so an image rendering on that browser on that device will be unique. So to fingerprint and track someone, they get your browser to generate a reference image then extract the details of the created pixels from the memory and generate an MD5 hash which is then unique to your browser. That's your fingerprint and every time a site generates the reference image it produces the same MD5 hash. That is then used to track you.

So an anti-fingerprinting technique is to throw in a very subtle randomness to the colours generated in the image, which results in a unique MD5 each time the test is run making it useless for people tracking you (you are essentially a "new" browser every time a site tries to fingerprint you). So if you have #000000 for black, instead it may randomise to #000003 one time, and #002000 next. It's a very subtle variance on the colours so won't be readily perceptible but on images rendered and shown to you this would create very subtle noise. Hence the warning for a graphics tool; the makers are aware this effects how their tool works and are warning you incase you notice the results.

[–] AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world 34 points 5 months ago

Imagine people with this much creativity and talent using it for good instead of fucking browser tracking

[–] Dragonstaff@leminal.space 12 points 5 months ago

That is incredibly interesting. Thanks for going down the rabbit hole.

It's truly shocking how much trouble companies go through to surreptitiously track us.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What would be a good extension for avoiding that fingerprinting? Using Gecko-based browsers like Waterfox and Fennec, if that's relevant.

Also poking @carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone since OP's browser appears to have one properly doing it too.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Just enable strong the strongest level of protection in Firefox. It's already in the browser.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 5 points 5 months ago

Will do. Thanks!

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

CanvasBlock

[–] Xylight@feddit.online 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Holy...that's why Blockbench (pixel art 3d web based modeling software) randomly gives me noise when painting with a solid color! It's been annoying me so much

Spoiler!test@community.com

[–] Moxvallix@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago

Developer of NeedCoolerShoes, the site in question here. Yes, absolutely correct, spot on! For anyone else interested in researching this more, the technique is called farbling.

In fact, as my tool also has layers, this subtle noise would compound with each additional layer added, until the noise was not subtle at all.

I received many bug reports about this, and it took me ages to track down the root cause, by asking users what browsers they were using and joining the dots.

I do worry that maybe I worded the popup poorly leading some more skeptical folk to worry my site was attempting to fingerprint them, which it is not.

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago

The real security hole is how much information the browser gives to the web server. The only thing a web server needs to know is what content the user is looking for, but sadly web browser send a ton of identifying information to the point where it's become expected behaviour and some websites won't work without it.

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

fingerprinting mechanisms use pixel coloring to help fingerprint you. browsers have implementations that fuzz pixel colors to prevent this fingerprinting often in imperceptible manner. Think shifting pixel alpha values by a random +/- 0.3 values; range was arbitrarily chosen for demonstration purposes.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

as in, fingerprinting mechanisms use the colors that are in my OS’s color picker? or is it other colors?

[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Every computer will generate different colors due to driver/os/hardware differences when rendering anything. these differences are often imperceptible to the eye by easily grabbed via browser apis. by randomizing the results just a tad it defeats the trackers.

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 months ago

np, i wouldnt worry about it for this website just leave your settings alone until you personally notice an issue. and even then...

[–] lorty@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 5 months ago
[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ok, but how does changing the colour of pixels help identify me?

Is it for tracking the source of screenshots?

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

It's a two part process. One part happens on your machine. The browser is given a fingerprint to shift colors, and then the trackers can identify you even in a screenshot.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Your links don't start with https:// so the Lemmy web interface prepends [instance domain]/post/

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

huh, that’s a strange behaviour. thank you for telling me, it’s fixed now!

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

That's the cover story for when they're implanting false memories

[–] Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I find this interesting also. Enabling fingerprinting resistance a) makes every site light mode by default and b) when ssh-ing into my VMs on Proxmox (LXCs not affected), stops me from sending underscores and other symbols.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 4 points 5 months ago

because a) your browser does not send anymore which color scheme you prefer and b) probably sets a single keymap or language setting that affect websites that try to grab your keys.

add the proxmox domain to the whitelist and it will be better. there's a pref for it that I can't recall now but mayne it can be configured in this menu too: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-against-fingerprinting#w_how-do-i-disable-this-protection-for-a-website
let me know if it didn't fix it and I'll look up the pref