
Am I Unique? - vinnyglennon
https://amiunique.org/fp
======
foxfired
Hello author. Really interested in checking your page but, 504! So here is
what you can do:

Copy all your static assets to another server[1]. You can use a cheap
digitalocean server or any vps really. Have them served using nginx.

This will relieve your main server from all those extra connections and it can
focus on your application.

And use some caching mechanism. Memcache drivers are available for many
languages.

Good luck

[1]:[https://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-
request](https://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request)

~~~
sigi45
That is very vague / strange tips you give out.

The response header shows, that nginx is used already.

There is no need to put static assets to some cheap vps if you have already a
server. Depending on the bootleneck, it might be much better to upgrade ram or
optimise the code or finetune some database cache or whatever happens at the
BE.

But without knowing details, it doesn't make much sense to move assets or use
memcache. Often enough, people do shitty sqls or are not even aware that there
is something like a query cache (which you can also use lightweight without
adding memcache to your stack).

When you look at there about page and also make a lookup on there ip, you will
see that it is hosted by them from there own network
[https://www.inria.fr/](https://www.inria.fr/). So this project was probably
build by some researchers, which some agenda on how well that service should
actually run and a budget. They probably got a VM from there IT Department (or
are part of it) and are in theory capable of fixing there issues but the
working student is on a new project and no one really cares about it (the
domain was registered 2014).

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RonanTheGrey
I use this regularly, the problem I have is that it doesn't give you any
suggestions to be 'less unique' \- things like suggesting a similar User Agent
to yours, but one that is much more common, or even something as simple as
linking to things like Canvas Defender for Firefox, which adds random noise to
hidden canvas invocations so that your canvas render isn't identifiable.

~~~
godelski
> Canvas Defender

My understanding is that these don't actually help. Even their own blog
suggests that there is a lot of limitations[0]. And they even talk about how
TOR just returns 0. But if everyone did that (say FF did that overnight), then
wouldn't that help solve the problem?

Or does there need to be a way to force these things to be pixel perfect (data
perfect for the other fingerprinting things like battery, mic, etc)?

[0] [https://multilogin.com/blog/](https://multilogin.com/blog/)

~~~
0xADEADBEE
Thank you for this - I'd often assumed Canvas Defender was no good but I
couldn't quite put my finger on why. I would encourage anyone with even a
passing interest to read this truly illuminating post because there is some
fascinating stuff that even as a web developer I did not know:

[https://multilogin.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-
can...](https://multilogin.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-canvas-
fingerprinting/)

~~~
godelski
It is really fascinating how all this works. And I'm really happy that
multilogin writes these blog posts. I think it brings up questions of how
necessary is this information and is it worth the cost (loss of privacy). I'm
not a web developer so I'm not sure how useful these metrics are. Or is it
just limitations? How much of an impact would implementing pixel perfect
renders be (as in page load time)? I'd love to know what people that work in
these areas think. Pros and cons.

------
miguelmota
For those wondering what this site does; it takes a 'fingerprint' of your
browser using unconventional methods to generate a unique identifier.

Typically fingerprinting is used by advertisers for tracking in order to
retarget you.

------
jacobmoe
Bet I'm not unique in getting a 504 error.

~~~
Yntec
You just won that bet.

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dontbenebby
It doesn't seem to render my results unless I whitelist JS in NoScript. Not
very fair to force JS before saying if I'm unique IMHO.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
Basically everything meaningful used for fingerprinting requires JS. If you
don't have JS running, that's a signal, but a really weak one. About all they
have after that is your useragent and IP address.

Too bad most of the web isn't written to be without JS (or that we don't have
stronger protections against fingerprinting, so it wouldn't matter....)

~~~
flukus
> Basically everything meaningful used for fingerprinting requires JS. If you
> don't have JS running, that's a signal, but a really weak one.

It eliminates probably 99% of the population. Throw in some css fingerprinting
and you could probably be identified uniquely.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
I know, it's a really crappy situation all around. I went and spent a few
hours trying to see how to prevent fingerprinting and the answer is you
basically can't. That sucks.

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decebalus1
its down. But what does it have over
[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/) ?

~~~
FabHK
I seem to recall that Am I Unique has a FAQ on that very question, but I can't
recall the answer.

However, does Panopticlick actually do canvas fingerprinting?

~~~
extra88
One of Panopticlick’s browser characteristics is Hash of canvas fingerprint.

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brink
It's dead.

According to the wayback machine, this is what it looks like when it's up:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190217053927/https://amiunique...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190217053927/https://amiunique.org/)

No functionality to tell you if you're unique or not though, unfortunately.

Github page here: [https://github.com/DIVERSIFY-
project/amiunique](https://github.com/DIVERSIFY-project/amiunique)

~~~
Etheryte
Looks like the page got slashdotted, it loaded halfway for me five minutes ago
and is completely down now.

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fratlas
Are there any databases that can link fingerprints to identities? Could there
be companies legally using them?

~~~
Gpetrium
I mean, most governments have fingerprint databases that are linked to
identities. Some governments hire contractors to take care of that.

~~~
0xADEADBEE
I'd be very interested on reading more about this if you have anything you
could point me towards

~~~
OldManAndTheCpp
This is a joke: the parent commenter is talking about fingerprints on your
hands, not browser fingerprinting.

------
neduma
You're absolutely unique like everybody else - Unknown

