Github has made it impossible to create an account when using a VPN and a privacy browser with fully spoofed hardware identifiers. (Use Firefox or Firefox-based Privacy Browser, VPN, install Canvasblocker to test this.) I create an account with Google or Apple (both requiring hardware identifiers and numbers and birthdates) or I can use an email. When I use an email, it comes back with this horrible test, and even if I do it completely correctly, it tells me after I didn’t do the test right, gaslighting me with a picture of what I chose (which I didn’t choose) and showing me the correct picture (which I did choose and it claims I didn’t select).
It’s fucking bullshit and it’s more corporate control of open source software. For people who have their discussion or issue tracker, I can’t even participate without hardware identifiers likely linked to me some other way and phone numbers. It’s fucking bullshit. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, FUCK YOU!!!
I am so tired of this bullshit. I just want to post an issue about a piece of software. You don’t need my fingerprint, hardware or personal, or biometric shit. This is a slippery slope. Fuck them.
I really hope more developers just get the fuck off Github. Honestly, if you are developing privacy-oriented software and using github, there’s a mistmatch and it’s bullshit, and I know it’s time consuming and annoying to move, but please do. This is fucking bullshit and it’s not like it’s going to become LESS annoying over time. FUCK THIS.
I’m curious when this happened. I literally created a new account for GitHub this week, only using an email address, and on Firefox. No wonky tests or anything needed.
It’s probably being A/B tested and you’re not in the test group yet.
Or, alternatively, OP is from an area that’s been designated as having an increased risk of fake accounts and these extra measures are being deployed selectively.
Firefox still leaks enough info to get a good fingerprint off of you
Codeberg for the win.
What about GitLab? When Microsoft bought GitHub, people got angry, and migrated their code to GitLab. When that happened, GitLab was all over the headlines for a while, but I haven’t read much about it ever since.
Gitlab has a horrible UI when you have a smaller screen or lower end device, and I heard also not really great server-side performance compared to forgejo and gitea.
Also, the gitlab.com instance randomly blocks people or demands their credit card data.
They seem to be going for IPO so codeberg it is.
It’s the same story for basically anything MS touches.
Tangential to the main point you’re going for: when you say fingerprint or biometrics I think you’re referring to passkeys.
Passkeys don’t share any of your fingerprint or other biometric identifiers with anyone.https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/10/passkeys-and-privacy
One of the major design criteria of their creation was to be an increase in security without sacrificing privacy. It’s made them more finicky to get working but there’s a very good reason they’re very popular with security professionals.
They are not referring to passkeys. They’re referring to deterministic algorithms for uniquely labeling a particular device or person, despite any privacy enhancing features that device or person employed. It can be as simple as sampling various hardware specs, hashing the result, and using that as an ID for the person. So, if you switch browsers, they know it’s still you. More complex techniques exist, obviously.
I know how device fingerprinting works, thank you though.
You don’t need my fingerprint, hardware or personal, or biometric shit.
To me that sounds like hardware identifiers, but also quite specifically the things passkeys use. Hence I mentioned it as aside from their main point, which was “don’t track me”, because the biometrics GitHub or any website is going to ask you to use can’t be used for that.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. As far as I am aware, passkeys issue a one-time-token derived from a private key stored on the device. You can only access the private key via your devices own security (i.e., typically biometric). GitHub can only access the resulting one-time token, and it can verify that the token was derived from the private key using some cryptography. So, agreed. It’s not much different from a tracking perspective than just tracking password-based logins.
Though, I got the impression OP was talking about something else. Maybe I misunderstood them.
That’s close enough for a privacy perspective. There’s also limitations on domains that can request the auth, specifically ”only the one the credential is for", and there’s a different key per domain and user typically.
It’s also implemented in a way where if the user doesn’t choose to disclose their account to the service, the service can’t know.Caring about privacy and caring about the details of a security protocol are distinct. You’d be surprised how many people who care about privacy are deeply wary of passkeys because of the biometric factor, which is unfortunate because the way it authenticates is a lot harder to track across domains by design.
I understood they had a lot of concerns, one of which was biometrics via passkeys since GitHub was a very early adopter due to the supply chain risk they pose.
Passkeys seem to be advertised in ways that puts people off:
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TPMs, Secure Enclaves, etc. are deeply closed-source and security by obscurity. Until there is an open TPM implementation available, many users may prefer not to rely on them. It seems like KeepassXC allows circumventing TPM for Passkeys, but most people probably don’t know that.
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Too much “trust me bro, my cloud is safe” advertising from big Passkey advocates like Google.
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A classic hardware key may be indistinguishable from a normal password being entered. But Google has announced they want to push passkeys against user’s wishes here: “Is opting-into passkey mandatory? No, […]. However, over time, as users become more accustomed to passkeys, we might limit where we allow passwords to be used because they’re less secure than passkeys.” Again, not a great look.
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Collecting biometric data is always dangerous. I’m aware that Passkeys can be used without that, but many people may be put off before they realize that.
I think that’s why Passkeys have poor adoption among privacy advocates, even though most problems seem fixable.
I’m not seeing anything that’s not a great look about requiring strong authentication for access to sensitive portions of a users account. What you’re saying is akin to calling it a bad look that they force users to use complex passwords against user wishes.
I’m not sure what “trust me bro, my cloud is safe” has to do with anything. Passkeys live on your device. There are ways of facilitating device to device migrations of the keys if you want. You don’t need to use them to use passkeys. And at least on Android you don’t need to even use Google to manage the keys.
Most semiconductors are closed source. The processor, ram, and radio are also more than likely closed. The software interfaces to all of them have open specification and implementation. There’s like, six for Linux. Microsoft open sourced theirs.
Tpms are not security through obscurity. They are obscure, but that’s not a critical component to their security model.What they do isn’t really what “collecting biometrics” implies. They’re storing key points in a hashed fashion that allows similarities to be compared. Even if it wasn’t encrypted in a non-exportable way you still can’t do anything with it beyond checking for a similarity score.
You’ve done a good job explaining what I said previously: there’s sometimes a disjoint between privacy and security concern, and so sometimes people don’t understand something about security.
I wasn’t arguing against Passkeys, just pointing out how they are often perceived.
I was definitely arguing against TPMs, however. https://gist.github.com/osy/45e612345376a65c56d0678834535166 https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/18/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated https://www.elevenforum.com/t/tpm-2-0-is-a-must-they-said-it-will-improve-windows-security-they-said.13222/ https://scispace.com/pdf/tpm-2-0-uefi-and-their-impact-on-security-and-users-freedom-2e1ldhodqq.pdf https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html (But Passkeys apparently don’t need them, see my KeepassXC mention before. Should avoid biometric data, too.)
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Bro literallly posted a photo of a pile of shit, lmaoo
No need for that massive pile of shit
Btw, CanvasBlocker actually doesn’t do much more than default Firefox nowadays but breaks more things.
Been that way for a long time. They rejected me years ago. Much like Google, MS is in the ad business, and they want your personal details to sell to advertisers. Letting you sign up with fake account is contrary to their interests.
It infuriates me to no end that so many FOSS devs are still using Github. No one fucking cares about privacy or sovereignty until it personally fucks them.
I can’t figure out if Free software projects don’t know or don’t care that GitHub is run by Microslop.
It was bought by Microsoft after becoming established. Most free software projects don’t care enough to move if they don’t self host.
If you want a cloud alternative to GitHub run by a non-profit and hosted outside of the U.S.
If you want to get your data out of the cloud entirely, or at least under a VPS you control, self host your own git repo (Using the same software as Codeberg)
Done, thanks for the links. 👍
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Tons of alternatives out there
Also just, you know, git
I like GitHub, it’s a nice place for me, I don’t encounter any issues, except for some strange things in their UI.
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a coworker invited me to his company GitHub team or something recently, and I tried to join several times. each time, I got stuck with a 10 question test to “verify I was human”. it was not quick. eventually, I had time to actually complete it without timing out.
after completing it correctly twice without success, I gave up
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Ty for link
I’ve been enjoying using FreshRSS, RecipeSage, Kavita (ebook library/reader) and Flatnotes. My server OS is OpenMediaVault which i’ve been very happy with.
Seconding this. I recommend OMV if you’re new or inexperienced with Linux and self hosting. I started my server when it was a gaming PC running Windows and OMV has felt like an easy transition for me.
But Docker is all but required in my opinion. I like working with Docker Compose files and I keep OMV on a separate drive in case I want to move to pure Debian or other distro.
