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Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

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Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#51

Post by BenSchaechter »

lukifer wrote: post #33

What's truly disturbing is that this absolutely meets a need for a paid gig I'm working on now, where the client wants persistent identity tracking for the purposes of marketing and analytics. (I'm part of the problem, aren't I?)

Now, playing devil's advocate and judging by the number of upvotes this comment got -- couldn't the idea behind evercookie be used for good and not evil in some instances?

I'm curious more than anything else. For example, using this persistent cookie as an alternative to having users login?

Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#55

Post by code_duck »

lukifer wrote: post #33

What's truly disturbing is that this absolutely meets a need for a paid gig I'm working on now, where the client wants persistent identity tracking for the purposes of marketing and analytics. (I'm part of the problem, aren't I?)

It totally meets a need I have, too for storing user data on a site that doesn't have accounts. Really, just a couple of numeric IDs that people actually WANT to store.

Nothing evil about it in the slightest. We store it in cookies, people lose them right and left and then are all confused about it. I could use Flash myself, but really, this sounds like a great system.

Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#57

Post by code_duck »

skymt wrote: post #22
JeremyHerrman wrote: post #16

I feel sick after reading this. Would a browser extension be able to clear everything?

The privacy tools built into all current browsers can clear all but one of evercookie's storage methods. Specifically, cookies, cache, history & HTML5 storage should all be included in your browser's "clear private data" feature. Flash cookies are a bit more of a problem: they're in a plugin, so the browser doesn't know about them. A tool like CCleaner would work, or you could clear them manually with Adobe's Flash c…

rm -rf ~/.macromedia works pretty well.

Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#58

Post by _delirium »

phil wrote: post #34
xtacy wrote: post #29

So by default, I should be browsing every site in Incognito/private browsing mode, then.

Will that defeat Flash storage and the PNG caching trick, too?

On the newest Flash, it looks like Adobe's added specific private-browsing support. No idea how solid it is, but from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/privacy_mod...:

"Starting with Flash Player 10.1, Flash Player actively supports the browser's private browsing mode, managing data in local storage so that it is consistent with private browsing. So when a private browsing session ends, Flash Player will automatically clear any corresponding data in local storage."

Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#59

Post by lukasb »

atldev wrote: post #47
naturalized wrote: post #35

I know that in Chrome's incognito mode, nothing gets written to the disk at all (including Flash's Shared Objects). So if I open an incognito window, browse, then close Chrome, then open another incognito window and return to the page, does this defeat all this?

Nope, just tried it. Incognito, cookies there. Clear cache, incognito mode again and 3 types still captured. Really quite fascinating.

So we need a stateless browser and don't have one.

Re: Evercookie: A cookie that undeletes itself from 8 different storages

#60

Post by obiterdictum »

code_duck wrote: post #57
skymt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy tools built into all current browsers can clear all but one of evercookie's storage methods. Specifically, cookies, cache, history & HTML5 storage should all be included in your browser's "clear private data" feature. Flash cookies are a bit more of a problem: they're in a plugin, so the browser doesn't know about them. A tool like CCleaner would work, or you could clear them manually with Adobe's Flash c…

rm -rf ~/.macromedia works pretty well.

...followed by ln -s /dev/null ~/.macromedia
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