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The Underpants Project

lab.cubiq.org

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Re: The Underpants Project

#61

Post by jackcviers »

Fingerprinting can be very useful to you as a user, as well. Imagine that you switch between devices and work locations all the time and you use a core suite of web applications. Fingerprinting could be used, with your permission, to uniquely identify you across all your devices, locations, and browsers for the suite of services that you depend upon. Not having to ever enter a password again while remaining secure sounds pretty nice to me.

It is not the technology, but the evil application of said technology that is evil.

Re: The Underpants Project

#62

Post by kijin »

nodata wrote: post #19
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…

I think the font question was answered by http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Yes, I tried Panopticlick on a number of different computers and it was always the fonts that gave them the most bits of entropy. I wonder if installing a couple of new fonts and deleting a few others (which I do from time to time) would make them believe I'm a different person...

But really, browsers should stop allowing scripts to access the full list of available fonts. What use does a website have for that data, anyway? Any site that doesn't want to use one of the standard fonts should be using webfonts nowadays.

Re: The Underpants Project

#66

Post by jamesaguilar »

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…

That said, they can probably eventually start correlating the different fingerprints using other data, like device id, location patterns, etc. It would not be impossible to build a dossier of all your browsers and devices, especially if you ever log in to any online service from multiple machines.

Re: The Underpants Project

#67

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Underpants Project

#68

Post by xymostech »

rapidsnail wrote: post #9

I can see that even in chrome "incognito mode"

I would like to remind you that when you open incognito, it specifically says:

"Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of: - Websites that collect or share information about you"

Incognito only prevents information from being stored on your computer, not anyone else's.

Re: The Underpants Project

#69

Post by msredmond »

Siverv wrote: post #32
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.

Underpants could be a synonym for underwear, in which case it could make sense: you'd like to keep you fingerprint private on the web, and your underwear private in real life.

This is exactly how I took it.
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