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Google Is A Serial Tracker (softpedia.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Two Princeton academics conducted a massive research into how websites track users using various techniques. The results of the study, which they claim to be the biggest to date, shows that Google, through multiple domains, is tracking users on around 80 percent of all Top 1 Million domains. Researchers say that Google-owned domains account for the top 5 most popular trackers and 12 of the top 20 tracker domains. Additionally, besides tracking scripts, HTML5 canvas fingerprinting and WebRTC local IP discover, researchers discovered a new user fingerprinting technique that uses the AudioContext API. Third-party trackers use it to send low-frequency sounds to a user's PC and measure how the PC processes the data, creating an unique fingerprint based on the user's hardware and software capabilities. A demo page for this technique is available. Of course, this sort of thing is nothing new and occurs all across the web and beyond. MIT and Oxford published a study this week that revealed that Twitter location tags on only a few tweets can reveal details about the account's owner, such as his/her real world address, hobbies and medical history. Another recently released study by Stanford shows that phone call metadata can also be used to infer personal details about a phone owner.

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Joke's on them! by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't even have a computer!

    Sent from my iPhone 6.

    1. Re: Joke's on them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Jokes on you! I don't even have a phone.

      Sent from my pager.

    2. Re:Joke's on them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Joke's on you! I don't even have a sense of humour!

    3. Re:Joke's on them! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Funny

      You're joking, obviously. But tracking can be convenient. The other day I was in a hurry, and had to enter some data in a form. I just googled "what was that secret and private account number of mine in Panama, please?" and voilà, form filled!

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    4. Re: Joke's on them! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Jokes on you! I don't even own any digital electronics!

      Sent from my abacus.

  2. Re:yes, i used to see women's intimate ads by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Funny

    half naked women on my slashdot page

    I'm failing to see a problem with this