

How unique -- and trackable -- is your web browser? - profquail
http://panopticlick.eff.org/index.php?action=log&js=yes

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samaparicio
The scary thought is that their "solutions" page doesn't really offer any good
solution. TOR = slow browsing, privacy mode = doesn't really help that much,
browsing from your cell phone = hell no...

With regards to the "privacy mode" of most browsers, I think that the feature
is mis-named since it mostly refers to the browser's tracking of your
activity, not the server's.

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asb
You ignore the noscript option which seems the most practical.

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mseebach
I have noscript, but I'm still only one in 47,347. While not uniquely
identifying me, I often frequent sites with far less than 50.000 unique
visitors.

I'm guessing my non-snow leopard Mac combined with Firefox (that seems to
release an update every few weeks) gives me away. Maybe Firefox should stop
putting more then major.minor, and certainly not build number, in the User-
Agent?

EDIT: let's see: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543202>

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chaosmachine
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1082464>

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maurycy
Combine this with p0f (<http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml>), some basic
machine learning and you're all doomed.

By the way, browsers are generally scary thing. What about using the browser's
cache for tracking? [http://joshduck.com/blog/2010/01/29/abusing-the-cache-
tracki...](http://joshduck.com/blog/2010/01/29/abusing-the-cache-tracking-
users-without-cookies/)

It's an interesting idea how to get a truly anonymous browsing, though.

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majke
I was thinking about it for a long time. I haven't implemented it yet - as I
can't find a selling point.

What eff is selling: bits of entropy. What my mother understands - nothing.
What other users understand: I'm not anonymous, being anonymous is hard, let's
go shopping.

So yes - from technical point of view I can identify you even better than
that, but it doesn't solve any problem. Well, maybe except for advertising :)

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maukdaddy
Apparently quite unique =(

    
    
      Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 234,579 tested so far.
    
      Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys
    
      at least 17.84 bits of identifying information.

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's not really _that_ big of a deal. Their site still thinks my browser is
totally unique, despite having visited them the last time this was posted.

The reason? I installed a couple of new fonts.

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Tichy
So you suggest installing a different set of fonts each time you visit a new
site?

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thaumaturgy
No, I'm suggesting that the majority of computer use will invalidate this as a
viable method of identifying users. Connecting from home versus a cafe or a
friend's place; browser upgrades; plugin changes/upgrades; using a different
browser; installing or removing fonts ... all of those will break this.

The prospect of having this in place instead of cookies would be a huge
victory for privacy.

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teye
Your link includes a flag indicating the browser allows JS.

For those who run NoScript or disable it:

<http://panopticlick.eff.org/>

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Tichy
Very surprised that my plugins provided the most bits (13), as I have only
Flash installed. Maybe it is because everybody has a slightly different
version of the Flash plugin? Also, I can only assume that FutureSplash Player
comes with Flash? I also have the "Gecko default plugin", not idea whatsoever
what it does.

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ekiru
I think it's somewhat dishonest about the uniqueness of visitor's
fingerprints. I've tried it three times and been told I was unique each time.
However, the last two times consisted of me visiting the site and, without
doing anything else at all, refreshing.

~~~
jmreardon
Visiting the site sets a cookie on your machine. It would appear they are
checking that cookie to determine if you get counted again.

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mohanarun
From The EFF's Panopticlick's things that enable it to create 'unique browser
fingerprint' about your system + browser, Combined with browsing history as
determined by www.whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com, this is quite scary!

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FluidDjango
I'm using Safari(Mac) 4.0.4 (with only non-standard being ClickToFlash FWIW)
and they say:

"Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 261,326 tested so
far."

I think not.

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julio_the_squid
Have any non-default fonts installed or anything like that?

~~~
FluidDjango
negative

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gommm
hmmm, having a chinese plugin for taobao really marks my browser.... I wonder
if there's a way to tell to safari not to return the list of plugins? But then
I guess it would break a few pages...

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Raphael
Google Gears 0.5.33.0; These are the Gears that power the tubes! :-)

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jrockway
Thanks for reminding me that I need to use Privoxy.

~~~
jrockway
I did that, and I am still totally unique.

Methinks it's time to uninstall fonts I don't need, like "Radios in Motion"
and "Fake Receipt", or to just lie to the web page.

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keefe
very very interesting and somewhat scary....

