Panopticlick – How Unique, and Trackable, Is Your Browser?

https://panopticlick.eff.org

by donnut • 13 years ago

121 58 13 years ago

panopticlick.eff.org

engtech• 13 years ago

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it looks like if you could install a system font on a computer then you could create a unique fingerprint for that computer that is detectable by any website?

I am uniquely identifiable out of the 3.7 million samples because of my system fonts.

bluesign• 13 years ago

Also the funny thing is you cannot be tracked by this, because whenever you install a new font, update a plugin, install a plugin etc, you change your unique data.

solox3• 13 years ago

I don't think the majority of those who track you (e.g. retargeting advertisers) would need to track you for more than a month, that is, unless you are setting up your system or tweaking your IDE, it is very unlikely that you will change your set of fonts within that time.

Also, they aren't particularly picky about keeping you, the trackee, forever uniquely-identifiable.

Consider this: when was the last time you (the non-average) or your grandmother (the average) installed a font?

skwirl• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how your conclusion follows from your premise. You are still trackable until you install a new font, update a plugin, install a plugin, etc. This may not happen for some time.

Even when you do make a change, you could still easily be tracked in many cases. If I see a new signature that I have never seen before that differs from an existing signature only by the version of a plugin, I can probably safely assume it's the same person, especially if I see that the plugin was updated between the last time I saw the existing signature and now.

I have a feeling that web developers are extra vulnerable to this type of tracking because we tend to install several useful developer extensions, and many of us have our own unique combination of extensions.

nivla• 13 years ago

Given that now ISPs give you an IP address that doesn't change for months, isn't it much easier to track someone via IP+OS+ScreenSize?

nkrumm• 13 years ago

Their paper [1] mentions this, and suggests that ~37% of individuals who returned for repeat testing had differing fingerprints (they assessed this via a control cookie, placed by the site). Although this seems high, this was over the entire life of the experiment, with some users returning after weeks or months.

Importantly, we can assume that the fingerprint will change incrementally, and remain mostly constant (eg., upgrade plugin OR install new fonts, but probably not everything at once). Therefore, closely-spaced repeat visits could be algorithmically matched, even if the fingerprint changes. This could be especially effective when including other "unstable" (short term) information, such as IP or geolocation, something the authors did not attempt (because these are generally unstable).

From the paper (page 13):

"We ran our algorithm over the set of users whose cookies indicated that they were returning to the site 1-2 hours or more after their first visit, and who now had a divergent fingerprint. Excluding users whose fingerprints changed because they disabled javascript (a common case in response to visiting panopticlick. eff.org, but perhaps not so common in the real world), our heuristic made a correct guess in 65% of cases, an incorrect guess in 0.56% of cases, and no guess in 35% of cases. 99.1% of guesses were correct, while the false positive rate was 0.86%. Our algorithm was clearly very crude, and no doubt could be signifcantly improved with effort."

[1] https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf

alcuadrado• 13 years ago

That's not exactly true, but there is no public research that shows the contrary. I worked on a research project at INRIA earlier this year that focuses on that topic: http://stopfingerprinting.inria.fr/

AFAIK the project it's still active, but no definitive conclusion has been obtained.

malandrew2• 13 years ago

However, an unusual rare font could easily make someone detectable. It could even be a common font, but a rare variant of it namewise.

meowface3• 13 years ago

If the only factor they're ever tracking you with is your fonts, then yes, you're correct.

But what if you have the same IP address, user-agent, and plugins for a week, and midway through the week your font fingerprint changed? Then they just go and tie both fingerprints, or repalce the old one with the new one.

In reality this is not going to be a problem for any web service that seriously attempts to track users, and there are multiple such companies that are doing so and don't let this stop them. Usually only one fingerprint will change at a time, which makes it easy for them to account for it.

The only good solution is to prevent them from capturing that information in the first place, and the only way to prevent it is to block Javascript and Flash, which is most easily done with NoScript.

aaren2• 13 years ago

Why does it need to run a java applet to do this?

maxerickson• 13 years ago

It uses flash and Java to try to access the system font list.

aaren2• 13 years ago

Ah ok, it is just getting all of the info that a website could potentially get from your browser.

ds9• 13 years ago

I'd like to have more control over the Javascript runtime in the browser. Defeating this identification trick is only one of the reasons.

Suppose you had a list of options and could selectively disable, for example, monitoring of mouse movements on one site, or ajax on another. And for this in particular, something that would feed the site random values from a particular range for fonts installed, plugins installed, screen size and other such information.

Using that data in development would still work because 99% would keep the default "true" values, and the few geeks who would change them would get what they should/would expect on sites that rely on those values. But everyone should have the power to control what info they're giving out, and what Javascript is allowed to do on their own device.

WiseWeasel3• 13 years ago

They didn't use any JavaScript to get this information. Most of it is sent by your browser in the request headers, and the font detection used Flash and Java. They could have used JavaScript to detect fonts as a fall-back when Java and Flash are disabled, but it's relatively complicated to do so (requiring you to know the rendered width of a string for each font you're trying to detect), and it was not included in this example.

Sending incorrect information for Java or Flash fonts is an interesting idea, and likely would not affect user experience, as non-standard fonts are often served with the animations. Sending the wrong screen size might get you a mobile site served when you were wanting non-mobile or vice-versa. IP address and ISP are valuable bits of identifying information as well, and those are more difficult to address without using a proxy. But I would bet that randomizing your screen size for each request would break most fingerprinting code, since that would be assumed to be static.

gorhill3• 13 years ago

"They didn't use any JavaScript to get this information"

Then what are the five "no javascript" messages I see?

JoeAcchino2• 13 years ago

"They didn't use any JavaScript to get this information."

The list of installed plugins is retrieved via JS: window.navigator.plugins.

Not sure about fonts, though.

hipsters_unite• 13 years ago

I have Java/Flash disabled by default and yet it was still able to populate a fonts list for me. Forgive my ignorance, but surely that's not possible?

userbinator• 13 years ago

I'd like to have more control over my browser in general, and I think many here also share the same thought. The issue is that browser vendors seem to make it harder and harder to customise these sorts of things by removing configuration options etc. And requiring to install an extension/plugin to get this ability just makes it harder for the average user to become aware of and take control of this.

evoloution• 13 years ago

Mine is unique too, I checked Firefox, chrome and IE. I guess it is trivial for large companies to generate unique ID numbers for these unique fingerprints and crosscheck against cookie/login databases to extract e-identity. Is there an easy way from stopping browsers to broadcast this information? Using the Internet anonymously is really hard these days...

EDIT: Maybe it is even better for browsers to broadcast the most common settings if EFF discloses this information.

greenwalls• 13 years ago

Does anyone know any good Firefox/Chrome plugins that help make your browser less unique?

gorhill3• 13 years ago

Well I am using my own extension, with which you can block selectively cookies/javascript (among other stuff) and...

With cookies/js/plugins enabled I get: 1 in 3,719,197.

With cookies/js/plugins disabled I get: 1 in less than 160,100

Extension: https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard

EDIT: redid the tests with clearing cache before.

J_Darnley• 13 years ago

NoScript

Spittie• 13 years ago

You could (from the most painless to the more painful, in my opinion):

- Use an addon and change your useragent to something common (I use Firefox Nightly, so changing it to a Firefox stable release would make my browser less unique. Blender is a firefox addon that does that)

- Remove as many plugins you can (click2play won't help here, a site can still see the plugin you have installed).

- Enable click2play for the plugin that you still have installed (avoid allowing the site to fetch information with those plugins)

- Disable cookies (If you want to keep a whitelist, I suggest Cookie Controller for Firefox)

- Disable javascript (NoScript for Firefox)

Note that those could actually make your browse more unique, since most people allow cookies and javascript.

As a quick example of that, my browser has ~20 bits of information (one in 1.242.524) with Flash enabled, but ~22 bits with flash disabled (unique).

adrianmsmith• 13 years ago

The concept of a browser fingerprint being "unique" implies "worrying" in the sense that a user could then be tracked by their browser fingerprint.

But simply installing a font, changing screen resolutions, upgrading Java or Flash ("Browser Plugin details") or entering/leaving daylight savings time will result in the fingerprint changing.

So the browser fingerprint, as presented, isn't really a great way for websites to track users.

(And removing the aspects of the fingerprint subject to change, such as resolution and Browser Plugins etc., would then result in the fingerprint being less unique.)

SamReidHughes2• 13 years ago

Installing a font, changing screen resolutions, or upgrading plugins doesn't suddenly make you unconnectable to the previous fingerprint.

green7ea• 13 years ago

This only becomes troublesome if you have a website into which you login. Any time your fingerprint changes, it can be updated provided you login to a controlled website before changing it again. This allows a fingerprint to be associated with an account or person. So facebook, gmail and this website could track the websites you visit given the fingerprint data as long as it is relatively unique.

Let's now imagine an entity that scrapes most of the internet traffic and has connections within facebook, google, etc. This company could easily figure out what pages you visit using a combination of browser fingerprint from the request header and IP. This can be tied to a person using accounts. They can even identify who within a household with the same IP visits which website.

gurkendoktor2• 13 years ago

How often do people on TFT displays change their screen resolution? I don't have either Java or Flash installed and I'm still unique.

kojoru• 13 years ago

The fact that java and flash are not installed makes you quite unique by itself.

chippy2• 13 years ago

isn't really a great way for websites to track users.

You are quite right, this is true, however it's not really about that.

Firstly this is one technique that when combined with other information becomes more valuable.

Secondly it's not for websites to track users, it's for tracking companies to track browsers across multiple websites.

For example: A credit scoring / user tracking company that your bank uses. You log into the bank system. You visit other websites which have a tracking system. The bank gets a profile of the types of websites you visit, to better profile the types of customers it has. The tracking service has a profile of the types of users that it sees, to better place advertisements for their other customers.

Thirdly, a fingerprint of this kind is more of a multi-dimensional nature, than just a hash of the results. It allows for some variation, it will also update itself based on other information. For example "oh it looks like they have added a new font, but the other information is the same, and their behaviour across all the sites we track them is the same"...

weslly• 13 years ago

If anyone is wondering how to disable the font list: http://superuser.com/questions/292666/how-to-disable-permiss...

hoers• 13 years ago

thanks!

JoeAcchino2• 13 years ago

I don't know how useful is this to track unique visitors, the next month I will probably have a different fingerprint.

All it takes is a new release of Firefox (different version in the User-Agent string) a new font or any plugin update.

So with that fingerprint you can possibly identify me now, but you cannot track me over time.

SamReidHughes2• 13 years ago

Yes you can. A user agent string, plugin string, or individual font update is only part of the fingerprint.

gorhill3• 13 years ago

This just shows that even when shielding successfully against all other known mean of tracking [1], ultimately fingerprinting still can accomplish something re. tracking. Of course if a user doesn't care about other means of tracking, it's rather useless to worry about EFF's demonstration of fingerprinting.

[1] For example, see "evercookie": http://samy.pl/evercookie/

WiseWeasel3• 13 years ago

You can account for those factors by parsing only certain bits of the User Agent string, and allowing for the addition of fonts to the list (most typically don't uninstall fonts). With the plugins, you can ignore the version number and just go by the names. There are bits like browser name, OS name, screen resolution and the presence of all previously detected fonts and plugin names that you can be pretty sure won't change for most users. As long as you can uniquely match by certain factors, it'll be enough to link you to your previous session.

For a purpose like ad tracking, the period of time you need to track people is likely pretty short, as in from when they click on a banner or text link until they complete a purchase, so you can compare lots of data points to identify them. If you need to track for longer periods, like to retarget an ad to people who have completed purchases for x, then you would need to compare fewer, more stable points and hope you find a unique match.

nikentic• 13 years ago

Why does it need java?

chippy2• 13 years ago

it does not. But if your system allows it to run, it will get more information.

SkyAtWork• 13 years ago

I'm somewhat surprised to see that Chrome on my Nexus 10 shows up as unique, based primarily on user agent and screen size/color depth. Both seem to be surprisingly less common than I'd expect inasmuch as they would seem to be identical across all such devices.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Browser plugin that randomizes the user agent and other details with each request?

ugexe• 13 years ago

Great for destroying user experience that uses these for valid reasons.

Use throw away virtual machines if you must, otherwise there is no easy workaround

mikeash• 13 years ago

Perhaps the opposite would be better: pick a reasonable user-agent string and always return that for all users, always return the same (fake) monitor resolution, the same list of fonts, the same list of plugins, etc.

mintplant• 13 years ago

Previous discussions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980085

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1082464

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081309

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6188543

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1087975

cpeterso• 13 years ago

Firefox 28 restricts the enumeration of navigator.plugins[] to reduce the impact of plugin fingerprinting. A website can directly query navigator.plugins["Some Plugin Name"] to check for a plugin, but no website should need to enumerate all installed plugins just to look for one particular plugin. Unfortunately, many major websites do, so enumerating Firefox's navigator.plugins[] will reveal QuickTime, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Shockwave Player, and Java to avoid breaking those websites.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=757726

amenod• 13 years ago

And whenever you wish to test if your browser can be "hard-tracked" (not just by probability), you can use this tool: http://www.canyoutrackme.com/

chimeracoder2• 13 years ago

Interestingly, I just tired this using Vidalia (the Tor browser).

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 3,726,837 tested so far.

I may be using an outdated version of Tor. Did they reset their data at some point? I can't believe I'm the first person to have tried the test using the Tor browser in my time zone.

meowface3• 13 years ago

Is your NoScript activated on the eff domain? If it isn't, that statistic is highly possible.

chimeracoder2• 13 years ago

It's the Tor browser, so I haven't installed any extensions on it (the whole point of the Tor browser, as I understand it, is to present the same fingerprint to all browsers).

throwaway2048• 13 years ago

Their data-set it is quite old at this time, so it's simply too new to give you an accurate fingerprint stat.

garrettgrimsley• 13 years ago

Vidalia is control software for Tor.[1] The Tor Browser Bundle, what you likely used, ships with a slightly customized version of Firefox.

I would also recommend upgrading, as the bundle no longer ships with Vidalia.[2]

1. https://www.torproject.org/projects/vidalia.html.en2

2. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-bundle-35-relea...

malandrew2• 13 years ago

What are the browser makers doing to reduce the number of identifiable bits of data leaked?

Most of the bits of identifiable information listed there has a reason to leak since 99.999% of front-end developers have no reason to need that information to create an acceptable cross-browser experience for all users.

jamesaguilar2• 13 years ago

iPad == anonymous.

notastartup• 13 years ago

will they share the 4 million browser stats?

Panopticlick – How Unique, and Trackable, Is Your Browser?

Related Stories