

Achieving Anonymity Online Remains Difficult Despite Evolving Privacy Tools - digitalcreate
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/21/are-you-ever-truly-anonymous-online

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jagermo
Fun fact: Ghostery tells me, this article is framed by 67(!) trackers. Yes.
Online anonymity is hard. One reason are morons who sell out their users to
every tracking vendor with a little cash at hand.

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digitalcreate
The article refers to browser "fingerprinting" referred to in this EFF
research: [https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-
uniqueness.pdf](https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf) Curious
if browser companies are working to remove the traceability of their browsers
(other than Google, of course).

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owlish
The issue is more significant than just changing a simple browser user-agent
string. To completely prevent fingerprinting, you must also eliminate all
browser differences (e.g. vender prefixes). Additionally, remember that the
lack of information can also be information.

Also keep in mind that it's quite difficult to prevent leaking of other
information. An example: OS type can be determined from lower-level protocol
information like TTL and window size.

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RexRollman
Something I recently became aware of is that some sites (AT&T Wireless and
HBOGo) know when you are using privacy mode. How are they doing this?

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digitalcreate
At the very least, they can detect that your browser isn't accepting cookies.
They might interpret that as Privacy Mode.

