Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

neberej.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 95 posts

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#61

Post by jedberg »

greggman65 wrote: post #55
coffeecoders wrote: post #2

Hi HN, I’ve been experimenting with ways to reduce my browser fingerprint and exploring techniques to anonymize fingerprint data. So I built this. This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS but entirely client side. I don’t maintain massive lists of time zones or do server-side comparisons to calculate uniqueness. Instead, it automatically surfaces everything a browser exposes, explaining each i…

There's a mis-understanding of at least the Graphics part. For example WebGPU features. It looks like lots of info https://webgpureport.org/ But, they are bucketed https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/#privacy-considerations It's not zero pieces of info but it's also not close to as bad as it looks. Effectively, everyone who has, say an NVidia GPU, will likely have the same list of features and limits. As a more general exam…

> No, I have an iPhone Pro and am in the PST time zone, set to English. It has the exact same finger print as millions of other devices among the 40 million people in the PST time zone.

Your IP address, ASN, and location make this not true.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#62

Post by jedberg »

If you reload the page a few times, and you're using a modern browser, you'll almost certainly find it's a different fingerprint every time. Most modern browsers add in a randomization so that fingerprinting cannot be used for tracking.

So yes, your fingerprint is unique, but it's a different unique every time, making it pretty useless for anything.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#64

Post by embedding-shape »

jedberg wrote: post #62

If you reload the page a few times, and you're using a modern browser, you'll almost certainly find it's a different fingerprint every time. Most modern browsers add in a randomization so that fingerprinting cannot be used for tracking. So yes, your fingerprint is unique, but it's a different unique every time, making it pretty useless for anything.

Seems right, I'm on "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:145.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/145.0" and reloading the page I get a new fingerprint each time. "Unique Fingerprint ID" seems to be the only attribute that changes each reload, but it isn't clear how that's derived.

Edit: Ah, turns out "Unique Fingerprint ID" is just the same fingerprint ID printed at the top, it isn't one of the attribute used for calculating the ID, it is the ID. Guess I got confused by the placement of it.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#65

Post by dror »

greggman65 wrote: post #55
coffeecoders wrote: post #2

Hi HN, I’ve been experimenting with ways to reduce my browser fingerprint and exploring techniques to anonymize fingerprint data. So I built this. This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS but entirely client side. I don’t maintain massive lists of time zones or do server-side comparisons to calculate uniqueness. Instead, it automatically surfaces everything a browser exposes, explaining each i…

There's a mis-understanding of at least the Graphics part. For example WebGPU features. It looks like lots of info https://webgpureport.org/ But, they are bucketed https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/#privacy-considerations It's not zero pieces of info but it's also not close to as bad as it looks. Effectively, everyone who has, say an NVidia GPU, will likely have the same list of features and limits. As a more general exam…

Beyond the obvious IP address difference, there are other way to fingerprint you, see https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ which will actually provide details about how you're a special snowflake, tracked by advertisers.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#66

Post by ErroneousBosh »

coffeecoders wrote: post #2

Hi HN, I’ve been experimenting with ways to reduce my browser fingerprint and exploring techniques to anonymize fingerprint data. So I built this. This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS but entirely client side. I don’t maintain massive lists of time zones or do server-side comparisons to calculate uniqueness. Instead, it automatically surfaces everything a browser exposes, explaining each i…

> This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS

you walked right by the chance to call it WeirdoJS

Post reply on HN