The Underpants Project • Hacker News Board

Re: The Underpants Project

#21

Post by masklinn » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:35 PM UTC

robterrell wrote: post #14

You can view source to see what they're using to generate the fingerprint: screenSize, devicePixelRatio, timezone, mimeTypes, plugins, httpAcceptHeaders, fonts. It's interesting that these are enough to generate a moderately unique fingerprint. I'm sure my fonts list is unique, so that's probably enough to ID me right there. However, not every computer I use has the same fonts installed, nor the same screen dimension…

> This won't track me as I go from my desktop to mobile device.

May not even track from one browser to the next. Camino and Safari generates different fingerprints on my machine.

Re: The Underpants Project

#22

Post by adavies42 » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

robterrell wrote: post #16

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #13

Does anybody know of a browser plug-in that attempts to defeat fingerprinting?

This fingerprinting can be defeated by NoScript. Or by turning off JavaScript. A sensible idea would be to make an extension that purges the unique elements from the set they're tracking (i.e. fonts, plugins, mimeTypes, screen size and pixel ratio, etc.) and provide a white-list for sites you want to have that information.

torbutton kills some of it -- they lock your window size to a multiple of some fairly large number of pixels. not sure what else they do....

Re: The Underpants Project

#23

Post by david_a_r_kemp » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:37 PM UTC

Does anyone have any idea how well this works with corporate enviroments where the typical workstation is a clone of all the others behind the same (NAT'es) address?

Re: The Underpants Project

#24

Post by asto » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:41 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #11

I really question the name of this. Underpants Project? I just don't get it. It doesn't really fit with the point you're trying to make, IMO.

It got us to click to link, didn't it? :)

Re: The Underpants Project

#25

Post by polynomial » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

> This technique can be used to find out some of the softwares installed on your system. For example I can say that you probably don't have Adobe Creative Suite installed.

Sorry, I have CS3 installed and fully licensed. But still a nice demo.

Re: The Underpants Project

#26

Post by methodin » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:47 PM UTC

You have to remember that it's not just about the physical tracking, it's also about time. If the page takes seconds to run it's not feasible on billions of requests because the tracking software sits in between the page getting paid and the target destination. If your tracking script takes seconds (this technique only works after the page is loaded), or provides a white screen jump period, it isn't something that will be desired. Unless of course all other options are removed.

Getting all pages on the web to remove the old image based cookie tracking in support of JS etc... also will never happen unless extreme circumstances occur. Most of the people running ad sites have no idea what you are talking about anyway in realms outside of Cookie and Tracking.

Re: The Underpants Project

#27

Post by blahedo » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:48 PM UTC

How is this significantly different from http://panopticlick.eff.org/ ?

Re: The Underpants Project

#28

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 1:58 PM UTC

polynomial wrote: post #25

> This technique can be used to find out some of the softwares installed on your system. For example I can say that you probably don't have Adobe Creative Suite installed. Sorry, I have CS3 installed and fully licensed. But still a nice demo.

Presumably they're looking at installed fonts to see if you have Adobe CS, so what did you do with the fonts that would fox this?

I'm guessing you're on Mac OSX? Can you have fonts available that aren't apparent to the browser somehow?

Re: The Underpants Project

#29

Post by drcongo » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:13 PM UTC

It failed to track me even though I opened the link in a new tab beside the first one.

Re: The Underpants Project

#30

Post by arthurschreiber » Mon, Apr 23, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

rapidsnail wrote: post #9

I can see that even in chrome "incognito mode"

Same here. That's really creepy. :/