4 ms·

In my experience, there's enough basic information in the HTTP transaction to identify a unique visitor for most forensic purposes. However, the level of detail

by qjz 16y ago

In my experience, there's enough basic information in the HTTP transaction to identify a unique visitor for most forensic purposes. However, the level of detail available for fingerprinting goes far beyond this. I just performed a little experiment, disabling as much as I could in Firefox to affect my uniqueness at http://panopticlick.eff.org/ http://panopticlick.eff.org/. I was surprised when disabling plugins (font info comes from java & flash) and even cookies had virtually no effect. It wasn't until I disabled JavaScript before I dramatically lowered it from 7 figures to 5. I'm going to try surfing this way and adding exceptions to see if I can sustain the experience for a while.

ams6110 16y ago
The more unusual your configuration, the more likely it is to be unique in the context of things you can't change. Most people don't run with all these things disabled...
- pyre 16y ago
  Enough people do so that's it's not a set of something small like 10.
Encosia 16y ago
The thing about Panopticlick is that the two most "accurately" identifying methods aren't stable fingerprints. As soon as you install an update to one of your plugins (the constant Adobe updates come to mind), your fingerprint is altered. Similar with the font list; programs seem to be installing new fonts on my system all the time, which makes that fingerprint unstable as well.
- eru 16y ago
  Yes. If you wanted to get serious, you should deal with unstable characteristics. Perhaps with Bayesian filtering or something? And maybe adding some outside information, like when the new flash plugin is released; and tracking if a user is likely to upgrade or not. If you have a working solution for unstable characteristics, you can also add more more characteristics, than they do at the moment. My scree1050x3360x24
  - eru 16y ago
    Oops, I wanted to write: My resolution and colour depth alone (1050x3360x24) identifies me for 18 bits at that site.

by qjz 16y ago

ams6110 16y ago

The more unusual your configuration, the more likely it is to be unique in the context of things you can't change. Most people don't run with all these things disabled...

pyre 16y ago
Enough people do so that's it's not a set of something small like 10.

Encosia 16y ago

The thing about Panopticlick is that the two most "accurately" identifying methods aren't stable fingerprints. As soon as you install an update to one of your plugins (the constant Adobe updates come to mind), your fingerprint is altered. Similar with the font list; programs seem to be installing new fonts on my system all the time, which makes that fingerprint unstable as well.

eru 16y ago
Yes. If you wanted to get serious, you should deal with unstable characteristics. Perhaps with Bayesian filtering or something? And maybe adding some outside information, like when the new flash plugin is released; and tracking if a user is likely to upgrade or not. If you have a working solution for unstable characteristics, you can also add more more characteristics, than they do at the moment. My scree1050x3360x24
- eru 16y ago
  Oops, I wanted to write: My resolution and colour depth alone (1050x3360x24) identifies me for 18 bits at that site.