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Gait plus heartbeat plus... It doesn't take much make a unique identification: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/

by akeck 7y ago

Gait plus heartbeat plus... It doesn't take much make a unique identification: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Daisy chain enough non-unique ID's together and you get something that's close enough to unique for the purposes of the people who will be implementing this. While the guy who's getting droned or the dude getting the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of cops may care about identification, the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  > the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy. I’m not sure that’s always accurate. The infamous “We don’t do body counts” episode comes to mind.
m463 7y ago
It's kind of like browser fingerprinting. A font list plus a list of extensions plus... who needs, uh, fingerprints?
- na85 7y ago
  It bothers me that browsers leak info like a font list and extensions. Specify the font you want to display, and if my browser doesn't have that font it should fall back gracefully, perhaps with a warning.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    If you allow a page to specify a font, the page can tell whether you displayed that font or the fallback by looking at things like the size of a div containing a particular character. Preventing font fingerprinting means limiting font use to default system fonts and web fonts only. If a page can use user installed fonts, they can tell whether or not those fonts were installed. Safari’s fingerprint protection does this already, I don’t know if other browsers do.
    - na85 7y ago
      >If you allow a page to specify a font, the page can tell whether you displayed that font or the fallback by looking at things like the size of a div containing a particular character. Only because the relevant APIs choose to allow this. Javascript served from the website should not be able to read this kind of data including element sizes. My browser should report a minimum of info such as viewport size and rendering engine, and if you (by this I mean the general "you") require more info then either you're a bad developer or your design needs to be rationalized. Edit: and to the guy whose comment got flagkilled asking about how I want to solve the "problem" of breaking sites that rely on crutches like knowing the rendered size of an element, I say this: I don't propose to fix the problem because it isn't a problem for anyone but advertisers, and fuck those people.
      - LASR 7y ago
        You’re proposing to not report the correct sizes for elements? I agree with you. But the reality is that there are a lot of bad developers and badly designed sites. Now if you enforce this, you’ll break those sites. So how do you propose to solve that problem?
      - plopz 7y ago
        If you cant directly measure the size, you can do it indirectly, put a character into a fixed size box with overflow scroll on and if scroll bars appear its less than the fixed size. Do you now want to remove the ability to set sizes on elements or to detect when scroll bars appear? I think this is a rabbit hole that only ends with removing javascript from the browser, which I certainly would be against. I think a much more reasonable solution would be to enact and enforce laws that protect private information.
        wlesieutre 7y ago
        Or even just draw the text in a canvas and check pixel colors. Which feature do you take away? Drawing text in canvas? Or inspecting the current content you’ve drawn in it? This sort of thing is used for even deeper GPU fingerprinting because the exact results of graphics commands can vary slightly. I’m not sure what browsers can/are doing to prevent that.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bch 7y ago
> There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What's more, it's easy not to walk kind of like you -- just take one shoe off. Of course, you'll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it's still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition). -Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow [0][1][2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel... [1] https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/ https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/ [2] https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/

by akeck 7y ago

Gait plus heartbeat plus... It doesn't take much make a unique identification: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/96321

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Daisy chain enough non-unique ID's together and you get something that's close enough to unique for the purposes of the people who will be implementing this. While the guy who's getting droned or the dude getting the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of cops may care about identification, the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy.

lostlogin 7y ago
> the people doing those things don't really care as long as they get the right guy often enough compared to the wrong guy. I’m not sure that’s always accurate. The infamous “We don’t do body counts” episode comes to mind.

m463 7y ago

It's kind of like browser fingerprinting. A font list plus a list of extensions plus... who needs, uh, fingerprints?

na85 7y ago
It bothers me that browsers leak info like a font list and extensions. Specify the font you want to display, and if my browser doesn't have that font it should fall back gracefully, perhaps with a warning.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  If you allow a page to specify a font, the page can tell whether you displayed that font or the fallback by looking at things like the size of a div containing a particular character. Preventing font fingerprinting means limiting font use to default system fonts and web fonts only. If a page can use user installed fonts, they can tell whether or not those fonts were installed. Safari’s fingerprint protection does this already, I don’t know if other browsers do.
  - na85 7y ago
    >If you allow a page to specify a font, the page can tell whether you displayed that font or the fallback by looking at things like the size of a div containing a particular character. Only because the relevant APIs choose to allow this. Javascript served from the website should not be able to read this kind of data including element sizes. My browser should report a minimum of info such as viewport size and rendering engine, and if you (by this I mean the general "you") require more info then either you're a bad developer or your design needs to be rationalized. Edit: and to the guy whose comment got flagkilled asking about how I want to solve the "problem" of breaking sites that rely on crutches like knowing the rendered size of an element, I say this: I don't propose to fix the problem because it isn't a problem for anyone but advertisers, and fuck those people.
    - LASR 7y ago
      You’re proposing to not report the correct sizes for elements? I agree with you. But the reality is that there are a lot of bad developers and badly designed sites. Now if you enforce this, you’ll break those sites. So how do you propose to solve that problem?
    - plopz 7y ago
      If you cant directly measure the size, you can do it indirectly, put a character into a fixed size box with overflow scroll on and if scroll bars appear its less than the fixed size. Do you now want to remove the ability to set sizes on elements or to detect when scroll bars appear? I think this is a rabbit hole that only ends with removing javascript from the browser, which I certainly would be against. I think a much more reasonable solution would be to enact and enforce laws that protect private information.
      - wlesieutre 7y ago
        Or even just draw the text in a canvas and check pixel colors. Which feature do you take away? Drawing text in canvas? Or inspecting the current content you’ve drawn in it? This sort of thing is used for even deeper GPU fingerprinting because the exact results of graphics commands can vary slightly. I’m not sure what browsers can/are doing to prevent that.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bch 7y ago

> There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What's more, it's easy not to walk kind of like you -- just take one shoe off. Of course, you'll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it's still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition). -Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow [0][1][2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel... [1] https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/ https://craphound.com/category/littlebrother/ [2] https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/