[LINK] Panopticlick

[Kim Holburn]

The really worrying thing is that paragraph I emphasised from the eff  
article when I posted about this a while ago:

> "In fact, several companies are already selling products that claim
> to use browser fingerprinting to help websites identify users and
> their online activities.


On 2010/May/20, at 9:17 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> At 08:50 AM 20/05/2010, Philip Argy you wrote:
>> "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 991,638  
>> tested so
>> far.
>>
>> Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that  
>> conveys at
>> least 19.92 bits of identifying information."
>>
>> There are lots of IT security, law enforcement and forensic evidence
>> implications with this technique, not all of them bad.
>
> But isn't uniqueness the worse situation? Wouldn't you be better off
> a blend in the crowd to avoid personal identification and targeting?
> Or am I think about this backwards?

No, I think you are correct.

> I ran the test and my numbers were like 7 out of 176 and 2.4 out of
> 4.7. I didn't allow javascript.
>
> Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in
> 2,635 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.
>
> Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that
> conveys 11.36 bits of identifying information.
>
>
>
> Then I allowed javascript and ran again. The ratios in the table
> didn't change, including saying no javascript. I allowed for this
> page, which is eff.org, but that code may be running elsewhere and is
> therefore javascript blocked.

The trouble I think is that it has cookies and a database.  So when  
you turn on JS it may still remember stuff and add it to the database.

I get unique on my browser even with javascript turned off.  In my  
case it seems mainly to do with the odd combination of languages  
accepted.

> Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in
> 2,642 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.
>
> Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that
> conveys 11.37 bits of identifying information.
>
>
> Note the minor change. So what is really going on with this thing?
>
> Jan
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
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