Transcript

Screenshot 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)

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    50·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • Xylight@feddit.onlineEnglish
      4·
      19 hours 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

    • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
      11·
      2 days 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·
      2 days ago

      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.

  • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    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.

      • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        19·
        2 days ago

        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.

      • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
        2·
        2 days ago

        Colors are slightly different on different displays and OSes. The site is trying to fingerprint the system you are on to adjust the warmth level or something, but that is failing.

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 day ago

          it is not affected by the display, and this does not mean it tries to fingerprint the user. it only just means that it uses the canvas API for whatever reasons

    • Scratch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

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

      Is it for tracking the source of screenshots?

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        9·
        2 days 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.

  • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    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.