Legal Commentary

EFF's Panopticlick Pierces My Privacy Illusion

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Panopticlick

Ran this the other day in Firefox and got:

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 551,209 tested so far.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 19.07 bits of identifying information.

Not one of the 551,209 browsers tested so far emit my plugin details

Similarly, not one of those 551,209 browsers has the same mix of fonts installed.

Might as well surf naked.

IE8 with privacy mode on is only a little better:

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 275,626 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 18.07 bits of identifying information.

And that 'other person' is probably … me.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on February 03, 2010 (boomark / email).