Panopticlick, what's so unique (and easy to find) is your browser?

Posted Feb 9, 2010 by Tim
Anonymity on the web is an issue rarely considered by both novice and advanced users. Innocents, often we simply use a web browser without a major inconvenience on our part.
(UpVery.com) Feb 9, 2010 -- Panopticlick, how unique is your browser?

Anonymity on the web is an issue rarely considered by both novice and advanced users. Innocents, often we simply use a web browser without a major inconvenience on our part. We work in Internet forgetting or ignoring the huge amount of information you expose to the web sites we visit. It is assumed that people who are taking advantage of that knowledge are some institutions and companies with different technologies track computer equipment for their own nefarious purposes.

Panopticlick is an experiment of EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) to see how effective is this type of online tracking. The experiment is to obtain a thumbprint that is calculated using the information to "share" with the websites we visit. Specifically, Panopticlick get:

* The user agent string of each browser.
* HTTP Accept headers.
* The screen resolution and color depth.
* The ins and extensions installed on your browser and their versions.
* The fonts installed on the operating system, as are reported for Flash or Java.
* Information on whether the browser runs JavaScript programs.
* Information on whether the browser accepts cookies and various types of super cookies.

Much of that information is collected with a set of scripts such as those created by Henrik Gemal in BrowserSPY. In addition, extra information creates Panopticlick for fingerprint analysis, ie cookies lasting three months, encrypted IP address and time stamps inaccurate.

The EFF is a respected scholar and advocate partnership of our "civil rights in the digital world," established in the U.S. and non-profit. What do you recommend to protect your privacy while surfing?

1. Do not use a browser uncommon. This makes you "less different" (the theoretical explanation is very interesting). The EFF reports that browsers "more equal" are included in smartphones, but this may change in future.
2. Disable JavaScript. A painful solution, is not it? But you can be selective with NoScript or AdBlock Plus.
3. Use Tor, a useful encryption software to protect your anonymity online. You can start installing Torbutton. Browsing with Tor is slower than normal, however.

In tests with a standard browser (Mozilla Firefox on GNU / Linux with typical supplements), it was only between 594,157 fingerprints, and with 19.18 bits of identifying information. Using a web proxy, the numbers were 45,708 and 15.48 bits, respectively.

And you, how are traceable?

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Trends: adblock plus, anonymity, anonymity on the net, cyber, plugins for Firefox, Internet civil rights, eff, Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Issued By Tim
Contact Email ***@gmail.com (Contact this user)
Country Armenia
Category Computers and Technology



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