Browserprint: are you uniquely identifiable?

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 1:04 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #21

enthdegree wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand it correctly, the way this fingerprinting works is just by using questions you need to show the website properly. 'What is your screen resolution? What HTML5 features do you support? Do you have this font/plugin?' Bar giving up all those facilities, the best you can do is ask and hope they comply....

There's browser extensions that will fake all of those to a standard value. The tricky part is that with fingerprinting, depending on your chosen faked value you could end up being more identifiable, if not enough people use it. For instance, you can change your user agent and headers to some generic Windows Chrome one but a savvy tracker will fingerprint your TCP connection and realise you are actually on a Mac, and…

Post by amelius » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

sam_goody wrote: post #18

Why do the browsers let the website know which plugins I have? There are some things like Flash that should identify themselves, but those are few and far between, and the check should be feature specific and handled by the plugin. Allowing every site to build a profile based on plugins [that is: a) fingerprint, and b) profile based on the plugins I use] is just an egregious violation of privacy. At the very least, i…

Post by mpeg » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 2:17 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #31

mpeg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's browser extensions that will fake all of those to a standard value. The tricky part is that with fingerprinting, depending on your chosen faked value you could end up being more identifiable, if not enough people use it. For instance, you can change your user agent and headers to some generic Windows Chrome one but a savvy tracker will fingerprint your TCP connection and realise you are actually on a Mac, and…

...collaborating with law enforcement to deanonimise Tor users (think pedophiles, not drugs) It would be interesting to see some reports on that question. Of course, the Law would never abide such accountability, but one can dream...

Post by rbcgerard » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #17

The Firefox "Random Agent Spoofer"* helps with this site at least. The biggest leak that needs to be plugged is the browser plugin details. Any obscure plugins at all are worth a lot towards unique identification. Why any script should be able to enumerate all plugins is beyond me. * https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/random-agent-...

Post by alex_duf » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

ibogunov wrote: post #27

if you are so worried, tha you are identifiable - just use your iphone, same hardware, same browser - same fingerprint(beside ip which can be dynamic & useless) - so literally all iphone users are the same user. (i was trying to make some start-up which required fingerprinting, but we pivoted =))