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Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

neberej.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#81

Post by greggman65 »

dror wrote: post #65
greggman65 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a mis-understanding of at least the Graphics part. For example WebGPU features. It looks like lots of info https://webgpureport.org/ But, they are bucketed https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/#privacy-considerations It's not zero pieces of info but it's also not close to as bad as it looks. Effectively, everyone who has, say an NVidia GPU, will likely have the same list of features and limits. As a more general exam…

Beyond the obvious IP address difference, there are other way to fingerprint you, see https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ which will actually provide details about how you're a special snowflake, tracked by advertisers.

that site is just as bad at giving probably false numbers that are several orders of magnitude off

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#82

Post by greggman65 »

jedberg wrote: post #61
greggman65 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a mis-understanding of at least the Graphics part. For example WebGPU features. It looks like lots of info https://webgpureport.org/ But, they are bucketed https://www.w3.org/TR/webgpu/#privacy-considerations It's not zero pieces of info but it's also not close to as bad as it looks. Effectively, everyone who has, say an NVidia GPU, will likely have the same list of features and limits. As a more general exam…

> No, I have an iPhone Pro and am in the PST time zone, set to English. It has the exact same finger print as millions of other devices among the 40 million people in the PST time zone. Your IP address, ASN, and location make this not true.

Those have nothing to do with "what the browser exposes". They are exposed regardless of what you use to connect.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#83

Post by jedberg »

greggman65 wrote: post #82
jedberg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I have an iPhone Pro and am in the PST time zone, set to English. It has the exact same finger print as millions of other devices among the 40 million people in the PST time zone. Your IP address, ASN, and location make this not true.

Those have nothing to do with "what the browser exposes". They are exposed regardless of what you use to connect.

But the browser knows them too and the site can get you to reveal it, even behind a vpn.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#84

Post by coffeecoders »

BinaryIgor wrote: post #69

Super interesting project! Out of curiosity, how do you calculate Unique Fingerprint ID and Canvas Deep Fingerprint Hash?

Thanks! The Unique Fingerprint ID is basically a hash of all the collected fingerprint fields. [1]

The Canvas Deep Fingerprint Hash is higher entropy and includes baseline shapes, emoji rendering, winding rules etc. [2]. It’s meant to capture subtle rendering differences between systems.

1. https://github.com/neberej/exposedbydefault/blob/main/src/mo...

2. https://github.com/neberej/exposedbydefault/blob/main/src/mo...

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#85

Post by coffeecoders »

informal007 wrote: post #80

Does I expose my latitude and longitude after visiting a url?

No, visiting a URL does not automatically expose your exact latitude and longitude.

I just get approximate location from your public IP address via an external IP geolocation API (ipapi.co), which usually gives city-level accuracy.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#86

Post by godelski »

coffeecoders wrote: post #78
godelski wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing. What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally . How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or…

You're 100% right. The raw fingerprint dumps alone are not actually useful unless you can compare them to a population. And creating that comparison is far harder than people think. To answer "How unique am I?" I need a large, representative dataset of fingerprints collected over time and ideally weighted by how often real websites use each feature. That would require running an backend and database. It’s something I…

I know I'm criticizing, but I do also want to make sure to say good job. I don't want to make it seem like I'm unhappy, if that makes sense.

For privacy prevention, maybe you can help me understand something better then. I was under the impression that for the most part, each fingerprinting technique itself was not enough to identify someone, but it is the collection of them. So in that setting, would not showing the distribution of the individual metrics likely preserve privacy? I can certainly see some subtle naive trap existing here that I'm not aware of but do you know of one? I at least would think things such as agent, dark mode, and some other things shouldn't risk deanonymization. Though clearly things like coordinates, unique fingerprints, and probably even the canvas fingerprinting shouldn't be shared. As long as each data point isn't associated with others and you have a decent sample size. But also I'd love to learn if I'm missing something important.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#87

Post by dtj1123 »

When I see discussion around browser fingerprinting, the proposed defense generally seems to be that you should blend into the crowd by aquiring a common fingerprint. I wonder how difficult to implement a solution where instead you randomly adjust your fingerprint as you move between sites would be.

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#88

Post by cocainemonster »

coffeecoders wrote: post #78
godelski wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really frustrated with these types of websites because they tell me nothing. What I'd love for these sites to do is help me understand where I am distributionally . How unique am I? On what? Help me understand what needs to be fixed and what my threat vector is. The problem with these is that I'm always unique. Doesn't matter what browser I'm on or what. If I am unique on a clean Apple laptop in either Safari or…

You're 100% right. The raw fingerprint dumps alone are not actually useful unless you can compare them to a population. And creating that comparison is far harder than people think. To answer "How unique am I?" I need a large, representative dataset of fingerprints collected over time and ideally weighted by how often real websites use each feature. That would require running an backend and database. It’s something I…

amiunique.org shows percentages of values

Re: Show HN: Explore what the browser exposes about you

#90

Post by stevenicr »

I remember a post on HN years ago where someone posted a thing that told us all sorts of stuff about our current browser,

I think it even included if your computer was on a desk or moving / shaking, I really want to re-find that.

I know many things have changed with browsers auto sending data, some things are more private and many things are less private.

Someone collab with me on a couple of blog posts about then vs now and examples of what could be inferred by combing data.

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