Quick check: how 'unique' or trackable is your browser?

bat999

Scrilla wrote: »

Isn't the point of this, that the more unique you are, the easier you are to track?

Yes, that's right.

flappy_mcwarbucks

My browser is pretty unique (20.71 or some other such number). Then i had the idea of changing the browsers headers so that it 'claimed' to be IE 7 (or 8 or 9) depending on how mischievous i felt.

But then my sensible head popped on and realised that would have detrimental effects on my browsing experience, so just decided to leave it as it was.

All the advertisers would get is a few random googles, constant checking of tvguide.com and me checking some techy articles.

All very boring stuff.

Maybe i should start searching for donkey !!!!!! just to raise a few eyebrows.

RobTang

It can cut both ways really.

Some sites (very few) use browser fingerprinting as additional sub-layer of security.

They will store of your most used and or verified fingerprint, if you or somone else logs into your account with a different fingerprint it may ask for additional factors of security for risky transactions (purchasing, transfering money etc.)

As with tracking is not a definate system but a nice backup layer.

In any case I reckon its far easier to use other methods to track you, the number of people who manage to avoid the easier forms of tracking are probably so low its not worth creating somthing complex to try and track them.

flappy_mcwarbucks wrote: »

All the advertisers would get is a few random googles, constant checking of tvguide.com and me checking some techy articles.

All very boring stuff.

Well not to an advertiser... potentially quite a lot of information, more than enough to start throwing targeted ads at out; assuming they have coverage over everysite that was visited.

Then again im not too worried about this, personally I do actually prefer adverts that are relevant to me.

RussJK

santer wrote: »

In Palemoon, you can click tools, options, privacy then tick tell websites I do not want to be tracked, if you haven't already

I did have that for awhile, but it got to be a pain as the websites I wanted to remember me, didn't

I do use MVPS, but most of my security is focused on preventing infection. I've heard it suggested that MVPS is falling behind hphosts, but Malwarebytes's blocklist is based on hphosts IIRC so it'd be redundant to use it in my hosts.

Mainly just thought it was clever how those reported elements can together be used to accurately 'fingerprint' a browser, and thought to share it. More so this part:
"In our sample, fingerprints changed quite rapidly, but even a simple heuristic was usually able to guess when a fingerprint was an "upgraded" version of a previously observed browser’s fingerprint, with 99.1% of guesses correct and a false positive rate of only 0.86%."


I'd come across the browser identity test while reading about some of the 'new methods' of tracking some companies are using:

Researchers Expose Cunning Online Tracking Service That Can’t Be Dodged
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/undeletable-cookie/

The tracking service can be dodged though, but personally I think the cat's long out of the bag when it comes to overall privacy.

mikey72

Anyone not come back as unique yet?