Technology => Network (in)Security => Topic started by: degenerate matter on October 03, 2014, 09:09:53 pm
Title: How unique is your browser?
Post by: degenerate matter on October 03, 2014, 09:09:53 pm
Browser fingerprinting is one of the most commonly used methods for tracking your online activity, probably fourth only to personal data, IP addresses and cookies. It is therefore important to consider how much information your browser is (unnecessarily) transmitting to the websites you access.
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
This test will give you a decent idea of what sites can see even when you're just surfing innocuously. Below are results for my standard configurations of the browsers I use. As you can see, even with some effort taken to obfuscate oneself, it's pretty difficult to blend in.
Chromium with ScriptSafe and Vanilla Cookie Manager:
Post your results here, I'm particularly interested in how mobile browsers fare.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: RustyShackleford on October 26, 2014, 03:42:44 am
1 in 4,637,003 baby. Even though I sometimes change my user agent java script fucks me up. With noscript it goes down to 1/10,000 or so. Apparently there was an extension that would fudge all the details picked up by js, but its no longer maintained. Anyone know of ways to do this?
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: theKit on October 26, 2014, 04:16:06 am
1 in 4,637,003 baby. Even though I sometimes change my user agent java script fucks me up. With noscript it goes down to 1/10,000 or so. Apparently there was an extension that would fudge all the details picked up by js, but its no longer maintained. Anyone know of ways to do this?
Um... I think you misunderstand how this works. The MORE unique you are, the EASIER it is to track you. You being 1 of everyone else tested means you can back tracked without a shadow of a doubt who you are.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: Umbrella Corp on October 26, 2014, 04:29:50 am
Is that right? Admittedly I don't know much about "computers" in general as I only use mine to browse a couple forums, run google searches, and watch anime/videos these days.
The way my brain interprets it, the more unique you are, the less chance you have to be singled out by mass data mining. Is this a completely noob way of looking at it? The FAQ didn't help me much.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: Rodrat on October 26, 2014, 04:31:21 am
Browser Characteristic
bits of identifying information
one in x browsers have this value
value
User Agent 13.04
8446.44 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko HTTP_ACCEPT Headers 3.99
Mine started out 1 in 4.6 million then when I refreshed it dropped in half each time...not sure how to interpret that.
Quote
Q:
Why does your browser remain unique, even if you reload the page?
A:
As noted in the panopticlick privacy policy, the site uses a 3-month persistent cookie to try to prevent double-counting of browsers.
Now, you may ask, what about people who block cookies? If you block cookies and hit reload, your browser will be multi-counted in the live data at panopticlick.eff.org, which means that the numbers will be overly optimistic about how non-rare your broswer is.
from the FAQ
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: RustyShackleford on October 26, 2014, 11:46:12 pm
1 in 4,637,003 baby. Even though I sometimes change my user agent java script fucks me up. With noscript it goes down to 1/10,000 or so. Apparently there was an extension that would fudge all the details picked up by js, but its no longer maintained. Anyone know of ways to do this?
Um... I think you misunderstand how this works. The MORE unique you are, the EASIER it is to track you. You being 1 of everyone else tested means you can back tracked without a shadow of a doubt who you are.
I'm kidding about the enthusiasm. What screws me is that even though I can change my http headers it is still obviously a linux machine because of the plugin and system font information. I don't care enough to use noscript all the time, but unfortunately I'm totally unique unless I find an addon or something that can fake those values.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: Lanny on October 27, 2014, 08:23:42 pm
I'm not sure using useragents is meaningful. If you're using a evergreen browser, which everyone is at this point, it changes multiple times a week.
I'm not sure why people are concerned by being unique anyway. There are more reliable ways of "tracking" a person than their browser details.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: Herr Ruin on October 30, 2014, 11:47:57 pm
Browserfingerprinting is the #1 Reason why most skiddies are not able to defraud large retailers like amazon after fucking up for the first time. Yeah you should be concerned if your browser is too unique in regards to browser fingerprinting but this one mainly concerns individuals who are up to shady shit anyways
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: Herr Ruin on October 30, 2014, 11:55:34 pm
I'm not sure using useragents is meaningful. If you're using a evergreen browser, which everyone is at this point, it changes multiple times a week.
User Agents are not fooling anyone at this point, this Video should give you an idea what I'm talking about:
That's kind of my point though. Besides browser plugins the greatest source of entropy in the test for my browser was its useragent. I'm saying that since it's such a short lived value it can't really be used to identify someone.
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: aldra on November 03, 2014, 04:19:31 am
Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 4,659,032 tested so far.
precious snowflake
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: stdio.h on November 03, 2014, 04:51:37 am
(http://i.imgur.com/VvfWQNc.png)
Title: Re: How unique is your browser?
Post by: stdio.h on November 03, 2014, 04:53:07 am