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72% of 'Anonymous' Browsing History Can Be Attached To the Real User (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Researchers at Stanford and Princeton have succeeded in identifying 70% of web users by comparing their web-browsing history to publicly available information on social networks. The study "De-anonymizing Web Browsing Data with Social Networks" [PDF] found that it was possible to reattach identities to 374 sets of apparently anonymous browsing histories simply by following the connections between links shared on Twitter feeds and the likelihood that a user would favor personal recommendations over abstract web browsing. The test subjects were provided with a Chrome extension that extracted their browsing history; the researchers then used Twitter's proprietary URL-shortening protocol to identify t.co links. 81% of the top 15 results of each enquiry run through the de-anonymization program contained the correct re-identified user -- and 72% of the results identified the user in first place. Ultimately the trail only leads as far as a Twitter user ID, and if a user is pseudonymous, further action would need to be taken to affirm their real identity. Using https connections and VPN services can limit exposure to such re-identification attempts, though the first method does not mask the base URL of the site being connected to, and the second does not prevent the tracking cookies and other tracking methods which can provide a continuous browsing history. Additionally UTM codes in URLs offer the possibility of re-identification even where encryption is present. Further reading available via The Atlantic.
As long as my wife can't see my porn browsing history, no worries!
Well, there's your problem. STOP USING SOCIAL NETWORKS.
#DeleteFacebook
First, they talk about a user's identity. Later they merely talk about Twitter links and finding the user's Twitter ID. So what is it? Can they identify users or Twitter accounts? If it's the former, that's concerning. But it seems to be more likely that they found a Twitter account user by comparing the browser history to a Twitter account that had been sharing those links. The latter doesn't seem as impressive now does it?
Wouldn''t this part of the problem be solved simply by using the privacy mode of the browser? If not, use a Linux Live distribution, which typically have no persistent storage (although some of them have an overlay filesystem that can be enabled especially for this purpose). This can be combined with anonymizing software like Tor for enough protection against everybody else but government-backed attackers.
Whoops, bad advice. While it prevents the addition of new sites to the browser history, incognito mode doesn't erase the record of sites already visit. So it's better simply to create a new profile from scratch and then delete that profile. Now I think incognito mode is really a brain damaged idea, because it raises false expectations of privacy.
Deja vu: In the 80s we had a 70ish actor as POTUS, a woman PM in the UK, and a bald leader of that other nuke superpower
People's Twitter profiles have been found out when following Twitter.
"they were able to correctly pick out the volunteers’ Twitter profiles" with the reason "People’s basic tendency to follow links they come across on Twitter"
The remaining 28% that they didn't correctly pick out probably didn't use Twitter and had nothing but cat videos.
That's almost exactly what they did. First, they need your browser history. And your Twitter / Facebook profile needs to be wide open publicly. And you have to use Twitter regularly.
If they had been smarter, they would have just looked at which Facebook and Twitter profiles you visited most often, and from there inferred those are probably your closest friends. A list of your closest friends fairly well identifies your profile. They decided to make it a tad more complex, though.
Rather than looking at the friends list, they looked at links appearing in the person's feed. They reasoned that if the subject' browsing history shows them clicking in 50 links from a Twitter feed, it's probably an account that has those 50 links in their feed.
No. Incognito modes prevent your browser from storing your browsing history (in persistent storage, assuming no bugs). They do not prevent other sites from recording it. If you're not actively blocking them, any page that contains a Twitter or Facebook button notifies these companies that you've visited the page. The same applies most advertising networks.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hey, Ralph. Gotcha, you son of a bitch.
Clear your fucking browser history now and then.
See ya at work tomorrow.
And, seriously, Literotica?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... shemale midget scat porn ...
So, no link?
No.
Because you only think about yourself.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
DDG dropped Google many years ago. They have many sources but the main source now is Bing.
This is hardly news. I would argue if you are browsing social media then you simply aren't browsing anonymously and many of us that have understood this ensure we behave appropriately when trying to be anonymous, this is not new. When I am using my Anonymous VPN to access content Social Media tools and sites, blogs etc are all big no no's.
Use Virtualbox VMs, restoring the previous snapshot after every shutdown. (There might be a way to do this automatically.) When it comes to computer security/privacy, the easiest to understand and easiest to implement options are not infrequently the most powerful ones as well.
Or you can go a step further.