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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-know-where-you-browse dept.

Researchers have proposed a cross-browser fingerprinting technique that uses OS and hardware-level features. The researchers claim to have successfully identified 99.24% of users in their dataset compared to 90.84% for the state of the art of single-browser fingerprinting.

Researchers have recently developed the first reliable technique for websites to track visitors even when they use two or more different browsers. This shatters a key defense against sites that identify visitors based on the digital fingerprint their browsers leave behind.

State-of-the-art fingerprinting techniques are highly effective at identifying users when they use browsers with default or commonly used settings. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's privacy tool, known as Panopticlick, found that only one in about 77,691 browsers had the same characteristics as the one commonly used by this reporter. Such fingerprints are the result of specific settings and customizations found in a specific browser installation, including the list of plugins, the selected time zone, whether a "do not track" option is turned on, and whether an adblocker is being used.

Until now, however, the tracking has been limited to a single browser. This constraint made it infeasible to tie, say, the fingerprint left behind by a Firefox browser to the fingerprint from a Chrome or Edge installation running on the same machine. The new technique—outlined in a research paper titled (Cross-)Browser Fingerprinting via OS and Hardware Level Features—not only works across multiple browsers. It's also more accurate than previous single-browser fingerprinting.


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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:49AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:49AM (#467221)

    I use Chrome. Vons.com and tdameritrade don't work with chrome for reasons. I use Firefox for both. Not like you're going to find me on match.com with both browsers, won't happen.

    For all I know vons and td ameritrade fixed their websites a couple years ago. I won't know, I haven't tried.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @03:59AM (#467227)

    It is the ad networks that help track everything together. Those little web bugs from indeed, linkedin, facebook, twitter, etc. Then the ad networks themselves have them. That they got it up to 99% accuracy does not surprise me. Heck most of the time just your IP and time of day alone is enough.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @10:47AM (#467320)

      Well, those won't get any data from me as I won't even allow my browser to connect to them. If my browser doesn't even send any IP packets to them, there's no way they could find out anything about me, not even my IP address.