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EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

panopticlick.eff.org

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Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#31

Post by throwaway252525 »

redwards510 wrote: post #19
Dylan16807 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, has someone made an extension that lets me pretend to have the most common set of plugins on the most common version of firefox?

Yes, everyone knows you can change the user agent string, but how do you change the list of plugins returned by the browser? Do you have to actually patch the binary?!

You can set plugins.enumerable_names to the empty string, or to the plugins you want returned. Unfortunately, this was recently removed.[1]

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1169945

Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#32

Post by StavrosK »

redwards510 wrote: post #20
rocky1138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we get together and decide on a common string that all of us can use? We can set our browsers to use that, and our friends' as well. Theoretically, the more people that use the same string, the harder we'll be to track, correct?

Yes! How would you say "I'm a generic modern browser that can interpret HTML5. Do not send me flash."

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25

Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#33

Post by r-w »

rocky1138 wrote: post #9
pde3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoofing your user agent on your own typically makes you easier to fingerprint, not harder. See footnote 3 of the Panopticlick 1.0 paper: https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/browser-uniqueness.pdf It's more plausible for a large population of browsers to share a single spoofed user agent; all of the Tor Browsers pretend to be a single specific version of Firefox for Windows.

How about we get together and decide on a common string that all of us can use? We can set our browsers to use that, and our friends' as well. Theoretically, the more people that use the same string, the harder we'll be to track, correct?

JonDo has done exactly that: “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0”. It hasn’t changed things much, thanks to its relative obscurity and the network effect involved. You should try it out!

Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#34

Post by r-w »

The test over at http://ip-check.info, by JonDo, is more comprehensive at the expense of not using information theoretical measures like those of Panopticlick, which would give a realistic (if biased) view of browser fingerprint uniqueness. They’ve developed a Firefox setup profile called JonDoBrowser that’s optimized for their own test. While the HTTP headers JonDoBrowser sends to sites can be easily distinguished from those of other browsers (though they’ve attempted to standardize HTTP headers within their own ecosystem), their proxying service compensates for that by withholding all traceable details and eliminating all forms of local storage, thus providing better privacy.

They’re located in Germany—a big legal plus—and their service uses an international chain of independent servers, but they charge for data rates greater than a few hundred kilobits per second. Thankfully, the browser profile also supports faster Tor proxying while maintaining the same degree of personal privacy. It also supports anything you can configure from your computer’s settings, but if that means something other than Tor or JonDo, it’s probably not redundant (i.e., comprising multiple independent proxy servers) and therefore less reliable. It can be downloaded from https://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/software.html; for those who wish to try it, I’ve found it works best with Firefox ESR, which can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.

Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#35

Post by greggman »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #14
pde3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoofing your user agent on your own typically makes you easier to fingerprint, not harder. See footnote 3 of the Panopticlick 1.0 paper: https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/browser-uniqueness.pdf It's more plausible for a large population of browsers to share a single spoofed user agent; all of the Tor Browsers pretend to be a single specific version of Firefox for Windows.

Okay, has someone made an extension that lets me pretend to have the most common set of plugins on the most common version of firefox?

What plugins do you have installed? Given Chrome doesn't support NPAPI plugins anymore I'd think nearly all Chrome users would have the exact same plugin list. Firefox is also planning to remove NPAPI plugin support so I except the situation to be similar there in the near-ish future

Re: EFF's Panopticlick 2.0 Launches with Tracker Protection Tests

#36

Post by rocky1138 »

StavrosK wrote: post #32
redwards510 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! How would you say "I'm a generic modern browser that can interpret HTML5. Do not send me flash."

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25

Won't that make some websites send you to the mobile version?

What's the desktop equivalent?

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