How identifiable are you across sites on the internet?

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I came across this interesting link today. Due to people blocking or deleting cookies between browser sessions various organisations are tracking people across sites in alternative new ways. This site shows how unique your browser "fingerprint" is:

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

It says that my browser fingerprint is "unique", and that it conveys at least 20.23 bits of identifying information.

Is that a good thing?

I got the same result as Idaho rose. I also do not really understand what this means.

Same here:

... and is anybody else bothered by today's so-common mis-use of the word "that"?

The above *should* read thus:

"Currently, we estimate this: Your browser has ..."

Last edited by leejosepho on 21 Oct 2010, 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It means that of their sample so far (more than a million) your browsers are unique (mine too) which means in principle that you could be tracked from site to site easily by advertisers. It also means that sites (who log your browser fingerprint) can tell it is you returning again even if you clear out all your cookies and return with a new IP address.

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,229,276 tested so far.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.23 bits of identifying information.

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 1,229,300 tested so far.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.23 bits of identifying information.

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?

It looks like they need to update that calculation.

But it is astounding how much detail the other end of a web session can gather about your installed fonts and decoders, which is a good guide to the installed packages.

I read this week that the Flash cookies (Locally Stored Objects) can be listed by any site - in theory LSOs can only be read by the creating site, but any site can read directory listing. If you look in %APPDATA%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects or ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects then you will see all the commercial and porn sites your browser has visited, and so can anyone else.

It means that this identification is a fraud. I got exactly the same results.

ruveyn

I got the same result. Nonetheless, the table below managed to list everything from the web browser and operating system I was using to the all the installed fonts. It looks like the message "your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.23 bits of identifying information." is a standard message that it just give to everyone. However the value listed in the table is different and is probably the true value. The table lists my browser as having 11.38 identifiable bits of information.

Well, at least we have each surpassed that proverbial "one-in-a-million" mark ...

That's very disturbing.