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EFF Says Forget Cookies, Your Browser Has Fingerprints
alphadogg writes "Even without cookies, popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox give websites enough information to get a unique picture of their visitors about 94 percent of the time, according to research compiled over the past few months by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [The Research] puts quantitative assessment on something that security gurus have known about for years, said Peter Eckersley, the EFF senior staff technologist who did the research. He found that configuration information — data on the type of browser, operating system, plugins, and even fonts installed — can be compiled by websites to create a unique portrait of most visitors. This means that most Internet users are a lot less anonymous than they believe, Eckersley said. 'Even if you turn off cookies and you use a proxy to hide your IP address, you could still be tracked,' he said."
Because I use Ubuntu 9.10, my computer setup is still fairly unusual even when using NoScript. Despite using the NoScript plug-in for Firefox, the test showed that only one in 21,800 browsers has the same fingerprint as my computer. Among other things, it said that I am using Ubuntu 9.10 on a 64-bit computer with Firefox 3.5.9. In five categories of information from the test, it said "no javascript," because the test could not obtain any information about things like browser plug in details, time zone, screen size and color depth, or system fonts.
My being one in 21,800 is still better than the average computer which is one in 286,777, but it sounds like my computer is still somewhat easily recognizable.
Every few days I turn off my DSL modem, which causes my IP address to change. But, even if I were to have the cookies cleared out more often, or disable using them, my computer would still be fairly recognizable. When I get around to upgrading to the latest Ubuntu 10.4 version, perhaps my computer will be slightly less unusual, but even then it would still be an uncommon setup.