This is really cool, the audio thing estimating how many voices are nearby is sort of terrifying
Wdym, the thing that lists how many speech synthesis voices are available?
Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#72"System Platform" : "MacIntel"
Even though the Graphics Renderer is "Apple M1, or similar".
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#73"System Platform" : "MacIntel" Even though the Graphics Renderer is "Apple M1, or similar".
I believe this comes from the (browser self-reported) navigator.platform, which is reported as MacIntel on all Chrome for Mac versions including Apple Silicon.
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#74Hi 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…
I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing.
What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally. How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is.
The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or Chrome then it is essentially meaningless. I got controlled hardware and vanilla software, how else do you blend into the crowd?
But in the wild sites aren't always implementing all these features. So I want to see if I'm unique to standard site or even one that is a bit more heavy. Importantly HOW unique am I? What things am I not unique, how unique am I, and what are the most unique things about me?
Having that information gives me the ability to do something about it. Without that information then this is just like any other website where essentially the message is "be scared! People can track you on the internet and there's nothing you can do about it!"
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#75This is useless. I think you misunderstand the point of fingerprinting. A powerful fingerprinting algo should strive to detect you as the same person (aprox) while you use two different browsers. A more powerful one will detect you while you use another device. This only detect your current refresh.
Thanks for pointing this out. At first, I was concerned – “Unique to 1 in 2,147,483,648+ devices” – but, my fingerprint ID changes with each page refresh, so there's no tracking possible. I'm using Brave on iOS.
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#76Hi 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…
I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing. What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally . How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or…
> What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally. How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is.
This EFF tool does this https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing. What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally . How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or…
> What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally. How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. This EFF tool does this https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Thanks, I forgot about that one.
To critique that (and maybe suggest what OP can do to make theirs better) is that there's poor visualization. What's great is that it tells me there right in center
> Our tests indicate *that you have **strong protection against Web tracking***.
> Blocking tracking ads? Yes
Blocking invisible trackers? Yes
Protecting you from fingerprinting? Your browser has a nearly-unique fingerprint
Bits of identifying information: 6.76
One in x browsers have this value: 108.61
One in *108.61* browsers have this value
In an ideal setting I think the site should suggest to users what they should change and show them where they could be with the new settings. Letting them play around and adjust a some settings.
I know I'm being nitpicky here and to be honest I think the EFF version is "good enough" but I still think adding such visualizations and letting users "see" the results makes things easier to understand and can help them know what to do.
[0] https://seaborn.pydata.org/generated/seaborn.kdeplot.html
[1] In this case it isn't going to be continuous since I pulled from the User agent so this will have more discrete bins. Helping inform the user would be seeing the proportion of those other bins. That way they know what to change their user agent to!
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#78Hi 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…
I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing. What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally . How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or…
You're 100% right. The raw fingerprint dumps alone are not actually useful unless you can compare them to a population.
And creating that comparison is far harder than people think. To answer "How unique am I?" I need a large, representative dataset of fingerprints collected over time and ideally weighted by how often real websites use each feature. That would require running an backend and database.
It’s something I’d like to build eventually, but only in a privacy-preserving, opt-in way that aligns with the spirit of the project.
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#79If 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.
Yeah, I made the mistake of including all features, even ones that change on every refresh like canvas or audio.
The fingerprint should really only use stable features that don’t fluctuate between reloads. That way it’s consistent for the same device.
Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you
#80Does I expose my latitude and longitude after visiting a url?