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[MrBSD]

I give up

Im with you.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Like, who still allows remote fonts loading anyway?

Can that be blocked? I don't recall.

 

[MrBSD]

Can that be blocked? I don't recall.

You can, but some sites refuse to load if you block remote fonts. Just for testing, block fonts.google.com and watch how many sites refuse to load.

 

[Espionage724]

Like, who still allows remote fonts loading anyway?

Disabling it in the past broke too many button icons on various sites (even 2 I host )

 

[drhowarddrfine]

You can, but some sites refuse to load if you block remote fonts. Just for testing, block fonts.google.com and watch how many sites refuse to load.

That would be stupid on their part. How does one block it in the browser?

 

[MrBSD]

That would be stupid on their part. How does one block it in the browser?

Use inspect element function, see what gets pulled and from where, and then create custom uBlock origin rule. If its a remote location, you can do it via hosts file or via dnsbl in your firewall. If you have one.

 

[Espionage724]

How does one block it in the browser?

Firefox has gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled; uBlock Origin has a checkbox:

And button on extension icon (needed to click More once):

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Ok so no user checkbox somewhere.
I remember reading about the security implications of downloading fonts back in the day but I don't recall anything. I'm sure I have a doc somewhere about it.

 

[loveydovey]

Disabling it in the past broke too many button icons on various sites (even 2 I host )

That's the UI icons font. Supposedly, many sites use FontAwesome for that, but I can't get Firefox to pick up that font locally.

The browser should look for the font locally, if it can't pull it from the remote location, but I think there are quirks to that. So annoying!

Frankly, it's very bizarre that we can't easily choose to have most common UI fonts installed locally, disable remote fonts, and just use local ones.

If not for security, then for robustness - remote fonts are actually not typical fonts, they require execution; they are CPU hungry enough that older hardware may stutter a bit even when rendering them. I see it on Telegram Web, for example - disabling remote fonts make scrolling super smooth, versus with remote fonts scrolling is a bit laggy.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

The browser should look for the font locally, if it can't pull it from the remote location

It does.

remote fonts are actually not typical fonts, they require execution;

I am not aware of any normal fonts that do that

 

[mer]

Ok so no user checkbox somewhere.
I remember reading about the security implications of downloading fonts back in the day but I don't recall anything. I'm sure I have a doc somewhere about it.

I wonder if that was related to the "malware as PDF attachment" we have now.