Hidden ip=hidden identity? Think again

wolfric

http://panopticlick.eff.org

I've said a few times in various posts that the information your browser sends out, being unique, can identify you on the internet. I didn't realise it was this bad but by god this is amazing and I've gotten paranoid again.

If you think you're anonymous by IP alone, think again.

Skerries

nice 1000th post
or are you who you say you are!?

wolfric

cheers didn't even notice that till you pointed it out

CreepingDeath

That information is like saying that if you hide your car registration number that your car colour can identify you.

It says my details are 1 in 150,000... out of a million.

So that's 15% of the population sampled.

wolfric

mine was unique out of 1 million. You're forgetting it doesn't have to be as good as a mac or dna/finger print. If you're browsing certain sites with that? That's good enough to track you. Timestamps and pages viewed as well as frequency,cookies and let's not forget mac address and possibly even delay between page clicking. That is just the tip of the iceberg that when you hit a page straight off without anything else you're already massively different to anyone else who they're trying to track.

GerardKeating

CreepingDeath wrote: »

That information is like saying that if you hide your car registration number that your car colour can identify you.

It says my details are 1 in 150,000... out of a million.

So that's 15% of the population sampled.

It says I am " unique among the 1,095,635 tested so far."

CreepingDeath

wolfric wrote: »

let's not forget mac address

Mac addresses are not accessible by web servers.
Not if you block insecure items like flash players etc.

I have Firefox and the "no script" plugin, blocking all Javascript unless explictely enabled per site.

wolfric

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Mac addresses are not accessible by web servers.
Not if you block insecure items like flash players etc.

I have Firefox and the "no script" plugin, blocking all Javascript unless explictely enabled per site.

Apologies no, not on external sites however if you're penetrating an internal network, a mac address (assuming it doesn't go through a router) will be identified.

Malice

I got

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,096,378 tested so far.

Is that good or bad?

wolfric

Malice_ wrote: »

I got Is that good or bad?

Well more than that it's just interesting and surprising. It's more bad than good but it's not really that bad. It means your computer can be identified and tracked even if you're hiding your ip. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a unique identifier for your computer among everyone elses out there but still it's quite easy to find identify and follow someone if you want to.

Overheal

it means that 1 in a million, you're easily distinguished, either based on what plugins you have running, your time zone, screen resolution, etc.

Anybody who works with custom user fonts is screwed as well: I occasionally install a few from time to time to dick around with. And some games install them to run with. I think morrowind did this for instance.

Dermot Illogical

I think that site is a pile of poo, tbh.
How can I be unique among 1m tests so far? Ubuntu 10.04 & FF - absolutely no browser or font customisation. No security changes from default on either OS or browser.

wolfric

drop the results in pastebin

Dermot Illogical

wolfric wrote: »

drop the results in pastebin

http://pastebin.com/2eektc5F

1 in 99,734 for this ([SIZE=-2]Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100715 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.7)[/SIZE] user agent? I find it hard to believe.

That's the string for anyone running Ubuntu/Firefox on 32bit Intel, default english install, who has their system up to date.

So, I downloaded and installed Konqueror and got this result.
User Agent 13.09 8707.37 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.4; Linux) KHTML/4.4.2 (like Gecko) Kubuntu

1 in 99734 are using FF and 1 in 8707 using Konqueror? Keep in mind that FF is installed by default. Konqueror must be added afterward.

ED E

...appears to be unique among the 1,097,191 tested so far.