Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs

Post by pyre » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 1:38 AM UTC

fingerprinter wrote: post #34

(throw away account...) Full disclosure: I wrote one of these systems (AMA) 1. You'd probably be surprised what we can figure out from this. You'd also be surprised that there isn't much you can do to stop it from happening b/c we've been able to find ways to get information that is actually outside the browser. 2. You'd probably be surprised to see how embedded this is already. I'm guessing most people have had thei…

  > You'd also be surprised that there isn't much you can
  > do to stop it from happening b/c we've been able to
  > find ways to get information that is actually outside the
  > browser.

I find it hard to believe that you're going outside of the browser if Java/Flash/JavaScript are uninstalled or disabled. Are you claiming to be using 0-day browser exploits to get information from outside of the browser?

Post by neworbit » Thu, Dec 02, 2010, 2:14 PM UTC

pierrefar wrote: post #35

neworbit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or a completely identical infoblock - anonymity of the crowd

Surely by labelling yourself with this identical info block you're marking yourself as a type of person?

Obligatory "Life Of Brian": We are all individuals!

You're correct. Whether this ends up being more distinctive or demarcative depends on how widely deployed it is. A few hundred and it's not very helpful, but if you have tens of millions of browsers reporting only "LOLCAT BROWSER" (or for old sk00l credit, "AOL") it may give data miners some headaches.

It's kind of like Tor (or if I remember right, anonymizer.com) in those respects - until you have scale, it probably gets associated with shenanigans; once you hit the tipping point, it operates as desired/intended.

But hell, I don't mind marking myself as a type of person who doesn't want intrusive ads. (Why yes, I do run adblock!)

Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs

Re: Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs