Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Browser Fingerprinting Research: the EFF's Panopticlick

The EFF has introduced Panopticlick, a browser profiling tool that will tell you how unique your browser's fingerprint is. This gives you a good idea of how easily your browsing habits might be tracked based on how many other browsers look like yours.

Results are simple: you receive a rating, such as "one in 177 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.", and you receive detail on how many pieces of information you disclose: "we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 7.47 bits of identifying information".

This is accompanied by a table which describes your browser:

I'm looking forward to using this in my security training classes when I talk about fingerprinting, as user agent fingerprinting is something that can be more difficult to explain.

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