Hi folks: Master thesis in evaluating anti-fingerprinting browser extensions for ff

[Tomer Yavor]

Hi folks,
Hope you all well.
This mail has the purpose to present myself and describe what and why I want to contribute.
I don't want to annoy anyone of this mailing list, so if you are not interested, feel free to skip this mail :)

My name is Tomer, currently doing my masters in Cyber Security at Hasso-Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. My supervisor is Dr. Anne Kayem of Hasso-Plattner Institute.
My thesis is not totally fixed yet (will be registered in march), but I am strongly aiming to make a new version of evaluating Anti-Fingerprinting browser extensions, like in https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3308558.3313703 with up-to-date extensions (like JShelter) and focused on Firefox browser.
Additionally, I want to add to the evaluation aspects like visibility of enabled privacy extensions which might lead to user discrimination.

Further, I would like to develop some features to JShelter and that's why I am writing you. I would love to hear your opinions (or ideas) about the features I thought might be interesting to add.

Two features I thought might be worth to add/ adjust:

• More precises Web Worker blocking. Since it leads to a lot of breakage (I tested the 50 most visited websites according to Wikipedia, excluding porn sites, and it broke 9 of them like WhatsAppWeb, ChatGPT, Linkedin, Spotify, etc.). You also have an issue tracking that already https://pagure.io/JShelter/webextension/issue/130.

•  Trim referrer info in HTTP header (small feature) if request is cross site, to reduce traceability
  

If you have any ideas or concerns I would be glad to hear them.

Maybe relevant points about me (and browser security in my vita):

• Worked in the past for Firefox Security Infrastructure team as a working student (2 years)
  
• Was involved in HTTPS-Only Mode of FF, HTTPS-First or Mixed-content upgrading

JShelter seems to me like a very interesting project and I would love to contribute. Also was very positively surprise how fast you folks response on the repo!

Actually, I would not ask for much support but would be glad to get ideas and (if there is the possibility on some point) anonymous insight how much affect a feature I implement have had on users usage.

My thesis will be free and open for anyone, and I am planning to cite your papers.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me, you can reach out to me also in private. I would be glad to answer or to discuss ideas :)
If you prefer to communicate with an official university mail address, you can write me an email to this address: Lars.Yavor@student.hpi.de (My name is Lars Tomer Yavor, don't be irritated my parents just made things unnecessarily complicated :) )

Have a nice week!

Best regards,
Tomer