Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
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Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#2Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes:
- Precise timestamp
- Monitor size
- User agent
- Browser plugins
- and fonts (!)
Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Based on these data, it's hard to believe anyone could truly trace my hardware over time.
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#3This sounds great until the spammers get involved.
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#4Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
It doesn't matter whether it actually works anywhere near as well as the hyperbolic sales pitch as long as advertisers buy it. It's nothing more than cookies and metadata collected by javascript, probably hashed together to produce a unique ID.
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#5Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
Yes. Fonts are the key. See the EFF site for a demo:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#6This is an effective demonstration: http://panopticlick.eff.org/
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#7Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
They don't really need to trace your hardware over time. They're selling the info against the device, not against the person. Someone might want to target ads to your activity profile at work, someone else might want to target ads to your activity profile on your laptop at night. It might actually be better for the advertisers to have separate profiles for those machines than one for you the person.
You may switch browsers and displays and plugins all the time, but someone like you is very rare. More people have never strayed from their Windows XP and Internet Explorer for the past 9 years than not.
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#8Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
The EFF tested this themselves. They run a website, http://panopticlick.eff.org, comparing with computers that have visited in the past. They have over a million fingerprints at this point, and my Chrome install is "unique."
It displays all data it lifted from your machine, along with how rare each datum appears to be. On my Chrome 7.0.517.44 install, I appear to be identifiable by my user agent (1 in 182,518), browser plugins (1 in 1,277,632) and system fonts (1 in 638,816).
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#9Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
The EFF tested this themselves. They run a website, http://panopticlick.eff.org , comparing with computers that have visited in the past. They have over a million fingerprints at this point, and my Chrome install is "unique." It displays all data it lifted from your machine, along with how rare each datum appears to be. On my Chrome 7.0.517.44 install, I appear to be identifiable by my user agent (1 in 182,518), brow…
Even the default IE8 on my stock Windows 7 Enterprise appears to be unique. In that case it's the browser plugins which identifies it (1 in 1277688). My installed plugins are nothing out of the ordinary: Java, Flash and WindowsMediaplayer.
Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
#10Based on this article you can "fingerprint" a computer using the following combination of attributes: - Precise timestamp - Monitor size - User agent - Browser plugins - and fonts (!) Really?? I use several browsers, and switch out a few external displays for my laptop. Plugins come and go with the browser version. My system time is synced to a timeserver (as I imagine are many other computers) but sometimes not. Bas…
Probably works fine for PCs, but for iPhones, iPads and other devices that are more uniform, they'll probably have to stick with cookies.
Do phones' timestamps differ?