Re: [Help-librejs] Offering option to block vs warn?

[Loic J. Duros]

<address@hidden> writes:

> Thanks for letting me know, and for creating LibreJS. I really like the
> concept and the program you did.  

Thanks so much for your heartwarming feedback! It is very nice and
motivating to read positive words about LibreJS. There is still a lot to
do, and if you'd like to help develop LibreJS, you sound like a perfect
fit in terms of motivation. Of course knowing both JavaScript and the
inner workings of Firefox are a requirement. But if you are willing to
learn these things then there's nothing that could prevent you from
mastering both the language for building extensions and the API to do
so.

>
> I don't think it would cause any harm to clarify on the settings page what
> each setting means
>
> -On = Automatic updates from   http://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ (?)
> -Off = No automatic updates
> -Default = Automatic updates from the Mozilla editors.   
>

These are the default from Firefox (and the other browsers.)
We could modify them for IceCat definitely, but I don't think we can
change this at all for all the mozilla-browsers we don't control. So I'm
not sure what to do about that.

> Labeling how each choice works causes users to think about the route the
> update takes and ask questions about how these settings might differ, which
> I think is a good thing.  You program seems to be the most effective I have
> found to reduce browser fingerprinting as reported by panopticlick.org,
> while leaving the browser mostly functional.   The only thing better would
> be if it automatically sent the complaint email for you automatically, but I
> imagine that is not likely even practically possible.  Firefox seems to now
> be putting out more updates then ever before, which would seem to make the
> browser fingerprinting situation even worse, if I understand the concept
> correctly, so I keep those updates off.  There are so many versions of each
> browser out now, along with ever other setting of everything else, that it
> seems pretty much certain that everyone's browser 100% unique nowadays.  

As you pointed out, Fingerprinting is an issue that we are trying to
address with IceCat. Quite unfortunately, any modification you make to
the browser have an impact on fingerprinting because it makes you look
out of the ordinary (and thus more unique.)


Loic