Today, uBlock Origin detected 2 trackers. There was an attempt to fingerprint my GPU by extracting canvas data. What is going on, OSM? Is this why I’ve been donating you my free time? Maybe you’re not so better than Google after all…
OpenStreetMap
Today, uBlock Origin detected 2 trackers. There was an attempt to fingerprint my GPU by extracting canvas data. What is going on, OSM? Is this why I’ve been donating you my free time? Maybe you’re not so better than Google after all…
Discussion
Comment from SomeoneElse on 25 January 2026 at 23:52
Could you perhaps provide a few more details? What, exactly happened?
Comment from TrickyFoxy on 26 January 2026 at 08:46
Sure. There are no panoramas, satellite images, reviews of POI, or a ruler on the OSM website. There aren’t even any ads.
Not all that canvas uses is fingerprinting. Vector map layers use canvas for their work, and this is a valid use of canvas.
I only know that OSM uses self-hosted open source Matomo analytics. Sometimes I see 2 trackers on the uBlock icon when quickly navigating through the session history. However, I don’t see anything other than Matomo in the uBlock logs. Therefore, this is more of a bug race in uBlock. Or in the code for enabling analytics.
Comment from Marcos Dione on 26 January 2026 at 09:38
Yes, there is a big difference between a tracker (a site that can see all the sites you visit) and a site’s internal analytics (which, yes, tracks you what you do in the site itself). The former is definitely bad, and we can have a discussion about the second, but sites need to know how people go though their site, and if they’re not using a recognizable tool like Matomo, they most probably have their own internal ways to do the same (Matomo is just convenient because its off the shelf).
Comment from Emerucha on 1 February 2026 at 04:56
First of all, no. Google isn’t worse than OpenStreetMap, since Google is notorious for not accepting my edits. And yes, it has a lot of ads.
Comment from Emerucha on 1 February 2026 at 04:56
Sorry, I meant better.
Comment from Anonymous36863 on 2 February 2026 at 13:18
What I mostly like about OpenStreetMap is privacy, freedom, details, and lack of propaganda and advertisements, unlike Google. I hope OSM won’t get bought out by big tech, or lose their mind like Mozilla. The analytics may be harmless, but if OSM were to add trackers, (e.g., Facebook, DoubleClick, etc.), I would be done with OSM. It all starts with a small mistreatment, and then corporations begin to get increasingly worse and worse over time, to the point they require an age verification, and replace their customers with AI bots.