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De-Anonymizing Social Network Users
An anonymous reader writes "The H has an article about some researchers who found a new way to de-anonymize people. Compared to the EFF's Panopticlick, the goal of this experiment is not to identify a user's browser uniquely, but to identify individual users. The test essentially exploits the fact that many social network users are identifiable by their membership of various groups. According to the researchers, it's very unlikelly that two people on any social network will belong to exactly the same groups. A 'group fingerprint' can thus allow websites to identify previously anonymous visitors. They describe the setup and all details and the results look very interesting. They also have a live demo for the social network Xing that was able to de-anonymize me."
Your font list is reported by flash and java. Your browser is innocent of this. Disabling flash & java goes long way to make your system information less accessible.
Sniffing history is basic feature of xhtml/css, price you pay for selectors. a:visited (background-image:"slashdotorg.png") && boo! - if you go to my site, you will request specific image and i can see it in logs, boom, i know you were to slashdot.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
"anyone know of a plugin that blocks them?"
NoScript blocks Javascript which in turn blocks most of these queries.
Still says I'm 1 in 200.000. Probably due to running Ubuntu. I'd have to manipulate my HTTP headers to something very common to counter that. No idea if there's an add-on that does that ... or what value to use.
Add Flashblock if you want to control the execution of Flash independently (e.g. allow JavaScript but only run one of the flash applets, like the video but not all those add/tracker applets).
I was running with noscript, flashblock and adblock... mind you, I think I had noscript set not quite so strictly... and clicked on the flash blocked box thinking it needed clicking on for the site to work...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It could be about the connections. If you get an ip and raid a house you get 1 person and a clean computer. They alert their friends and its all over.
With this you get the friends of friends and their interests.
The ability to play an eco nut, poker fan, open source gamer or other 'lifestyle' undercover is very tempting.
Over time they build a relationship and might get invited in.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Xing is a German site similar to LinkedIn. It's quite popular in Europe. Nothing to do with BSD, GNU or anything else along those lines.