Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
RLS0812
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Joined: May 21st, 2013, 3:41 am

Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by RLS0812 »

I am getting a little annoyed at how easily websites can get my system information and IP data from Firebox ..
How do I stop this ?
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Gort
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Gort »

Umm... if the web server didn't know your IP, can you tell me how it'll send you the web page you requested? The IP is the address that identifies your computer on the Internet, and that information is the only way that the web server knows where to send the web page that your browser is viewing. Unless you have access to a proxy of some kind, which can be used to hide your IP address and use its own (although the proxy will know your IP in order to pass on the information to you), then there's nothing you, nor Firefox, can do.
RLS0812
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by RLS0812 »

And about Firefox sending my system specs ?
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malliz
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by malliz »

All it is reporting is the browser info Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0
NT 6.1 is the universal ID for Win 7. If you block that many websites will not work properly or throw warnings about updating your browser. The location info is so bad mine reports me living near Brisbane and in fact I am in Victoria.
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LoudNoise
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by LoudNoise »

The Seattle part comes from the fact you are using one of the comcast IPs they use in Western Washington. It is a guess. The same set of IP addresses covers everything from the Canadian border to the Columbia River west of the Cascades. Folks in Centralia would find this funny. Folks in Seattle find it scary.

The classic of this sort of post was a few years back when such a search located mightyglydd in a grave yard in Southern California.
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Gingerbread Man
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Gingerbread Man »

RLS0812 wrote:I am getting a little annoyed at how easily websites can get my system information and IP data from Firebox ..

You mean the IP address and user agent header, something sent out by all applications that connect to the Internet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

There's no practical way to hide the former. You could use a VPN, but they're either a paid service or a free service that bombards you with ads, and they slow down your browsing speed. You could use one of the many proxy add-ons, but then your data (credit card number, usernames and passwords, etc.) passes through some unknown server.

There's no point in hiding the latter. Most sites examine your user agent string and will fail to work properly if it's missing. As for modifying your user agent string, that actually makes you more unique, and therefore accomplishes the opposite of what you want.

It's advertisers you should be worrying about. They're the ones who want to track your every movement to profile you. Install Adblock Plus and subscribe to EasyPrivacy. Or if you prefer being notified of who's trying to profile you, install Ghostery.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
https://adblockplus.org/en/tutorials#tracking
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ghostery/

And if you want something non-trivial to worry about, see below for what sites can dig out of your browser. Be sure to try the page in various browsers to see how they fare compared to Firefox.
:arrow: http://panopticlick.eff.org
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dfoulkes
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by dfoulkes »

RLS0812 wrote:I am getting a little annoyed at how easily websites can get my system information and IP data from Firebox ..
How do I stop this ?
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Small World... Mesquite Nev. here too... sorry about having to use expensive CascadeAccess :lol: ](*,)
As you can see she's (The CAT) always alert and on the prowl for Meoware !!
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Lee_Dailey
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy RLS0812,

that site also claims i am near useless ... um, er, _euless_. [*grin*]

if that bothers you, how about these ...
Panopticlick
Browser Info
Irongeek's Browser Information Page

that otta give you the heebee-jeebees! [*grin*]

*****
as others have pointed out, you need to provide most of this info to be able to use the sites. if you don't want to have all of it exposed, use a text-only browser and something like the TOR system.

take care,
lee
Noah Werka
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Noah Werka »

"Install Adblock Plus and subscribe to EasyPrivacy. Or if you prefer being notified of who's trying to profile you, install Ghostery."
I use both of these.

Using Adblock Plus, I set up two new custom filters:

Right click on the first image from "danasoft.com". Click "Adblock:block images..."
When the Add Adblock Plus filter rule box pops up, make sure it is a blocking filter. The name of the new filter should be ||danasoft.com^. http://www.danasoft.com/vipersig.jpg should be in the white box. Add filter and the image is disappears.

Repeat for the second image.

I don't know whether it prevents the sending of data or not, but the annoying images do not appear.

Noah W
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Gort
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Gort »

Noah Werka wrote:I don't know whether it prevents the sending of data or not, but the annoying images do not appear.

Noah W


As mentioned above, the Internet won't work unless the website you're viewing knows where to send the data. That means it has to know your IP in order to send you stuff. The only way to not show your IP is via a proxy or a virtual private network (VPN), but they themselves will have to know your IP in order to pass on the stuff that the website sends to you. Your IP is needed to be known by someone out there in order for the Net to work.

Yes, doing what you say will just hide those annoying images, but the website will still know your precious IP and other system data that is necessarily divulged.
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makaiguy
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by makaiguy »

Hey, guys, some of you realize this, but some do not. The images he included are not screen captures, but are links to the code that generates the images. Thus each of us sees our own ISP being reported, based on the IP we're using. For me the city reported in the second image is actually about 30 miles away, but still served by the same ISP.
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Lee_Dailey
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy makaiguy,

i thot that was obvious ... but i should know better than that. [*sigh ...*] thanks for the explicit heads up!

take care,
lee


-ps
i misunderstood what was happening _entirely_. [*sigh ...*] the link is auto-generating an image based on browser snooping so we are all seeing _our_ data there.

makaiguy is quite correct and i am going to have to learn to read AND understand posts. [*blush*]
lee-
Last edited by Lee_Dailey on May 25th, 2013, 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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the-edmeister
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by the-edmeister »

I reported this thread in the appropriate Site Discussion thread, so that a moderator can deal with it.



Ed
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Gingerbread Man
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by Gingerbread Man »

Noah Werka wrote:||danasoft.com^

Gort wrote:Yes, doing what you say will just hide those annoying images, but the website will still know your precious IP and other system data that is necessarily divulged.

No. If you set up a blocking filter in Adblock Plus, then the request matching that filter will never be sent out. In the example provided, all requests to danasoft.com are filtered. So Firefox will never communicate with that server, unless you visit a page on danasoft.com: Adblock Plus doesn't block top-level URLs (what you see in the address bar).

Hiding filters only remove items from view. They're used to get rid of items that are part of the webpage and cannot be blocked, so in that case Firefox does communicate with the server.

For the technical details, see How does Adblock Plus block addresses? and How does element hiding work?
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dfoulkes
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Re: Stop Firefox From Sending System Information ?

Post by dfoulkes »

Lee_Dailey wrote:

i misunderstood what was happening _entirely_. [*sigh ...*] the link is auto-generating an image based on browser snooping so we are all seeing _our_ data there.

makaiguy is quite correct and i am going to have to learn to read AND understand posts. [*blush*]
lee-

That is funny... so, I guess my post was pretty much to myself ](*,)
As you can see she's (The CAT) always alert and on the prowl for Meoware !!
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