Comment by gruez
5 months ago
>It's getting to the point where a user needs at minimum two browsers. One to allow all this horrendous client checking so that crucial services work, and another browser to attempt to prevent tracking users across the web.
What are you talking about? It works fine with firefox with RFP and VPN enabled, which is already more paranoid than the average configuration. There are definitely sites where this configuration would get blocked, but chatgpt isn't one of them, so you're barking up the wrong tree here.
Is your interlocutor barking up the wrong tree, or are you missing the forest for the trees?
According to the OP:
> The program checks 55 properties spanning three layers: your browser (GPU, screen, fonts), the Cloudflare network (your city, your IP, your region from edge headers), and the ChatGPT React application itself (__reactRouterContext, loaderData, clientBootstrap).
I guess Firefox VPN will hide the IP at least. But what about the other data, is it faked by RFP? Because if not, the so-called privacy offered by this configuration is outdated.
You might be fingerprinted by OpenAI right now, as “that guy with all the Firefox anti-fingerprinting stuff enabled, even though it breaks other sites”.
>But what about the other data, is it faked by RFP?
Yes, RFP spoofs or at least somewhat obfuscates/normalizes GPU/screen/font info. The rest are integrity validations of the server/app, and not really identifying in any way.
>You might be fingerprinted by OpenAI right now, as “that guy with all the Firefox anti-fingerprinting stuff enabled, even though it breaks other sites”.
I'm not sure what the broader point you're trying to make here is. Is fingerprinting bad? Yes. All things being equal, I'd rather not have it than have it, but at the same time it's not realistic to expect openai to serve anonymous requests from anyone. Back when chatgpt was first launched you had to sign up and verify your phone number. Compared to mandatory logins, fingerprinting is definitely the lesser evil here.
I wasn’t thinking too hard about the distinction between an integrity check and an identifiable detail, and I guess it makes sense that you’d be okay with one and not the other.
My broader point would have been that if OpenAI can identify you even when using Firefox RFP, it doesn’t make sense to give them credit for letting you use ChatGPT with RFP enabled. But maybe I was making too many assumptions.