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Comment by conductor | Hacker News Reader

> one in 506 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

So is this good or bad?

Some time this year, I'm planning to write a browser add-on which will send random (legitimate, from real browser versions) header combinations of the user agent (+OS) and accept headers. It can be semi-random, e.g. send the same headers to the same host during one visit. Combine it with the NoScript addon, use the RequestPolicy addon, block 3-rd party cookies, tell the browser to delete the cookies and local storage on exit, use plugins only in "on-click" mode (or don't use plugins), don't send "referer"s (or send fake "referer"s), use Tor for HTTPS sites (and sites that don't need authorization), and this will make hard to track you.

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> I'm planning to write a browser add-on

Do it for chrome.

...and let me send you money.

Thank you for your support. I'm sorry, but I use Firefox, and I have already created some small add-ons using Mozilla's Addon SDK, so I'm already familiar with it. If I manage to write it (and it will be under GPLv3), I will try to port it to Chrome too.

KISS for Chrome will randomise User-Agent.

https://github.com/hultqvist/Kiss

Save your money, the people who released this solve the problem:

Go here => https://stopfingerprinting.inria.fr/ Chrome + Firefox add-on.

EDIT: solved->solve, they didn't solve it yet, but this add-on helps them solve it.

Thank you for this link. So, currently, it does nothing to protect, it only collects information and sends to them for future analyzing.

Correct, they are researching ways to fight against tracking, this helps the researchers to do just that and stop future tracking attempts.

It's good. My result on the other hand:

'Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 3,230,650 tested so far.'

Yeah, I've thought about this too. I was going to try and use a system-wide proxy, rather than a browser plugin, to capture all outgoing HTTP traffic and sanitize it.

Making it more widely useful would require a lot of thought, because much of the functionality of the current web is predicated on using these same vectors. There are interface issues, and fundamentally, the web would be significantly less useful for a large number of people if the privacy situation were ameliorated.

When it's done in proxy level, you can't change the JavaScript objects, so the global objects like "navigator" (which can be used to extract your browser and OS version) will still be available for trackers (if JavaScript is enabled).

True. You'd need a defense in depth.

> Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 3,229,622 tested so far.

> Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 21.62 bits of identifying information.

Your result sounds a lot better than mine. Simply using Opera gives me a one in 111366.28 result.

You do realize it's better to have lots of browsers like yours in this test? The more unique your browser is, the more trackable you are.

It would be useful if you took ideas and code from or took over https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/firegloves/ development.

that's good 1:506 means you're not very unique. Unfortunately for me it says appears to be unique among the 3,229,643 - probably because I'm Chrome/Linux, my ratio basically means I can be trivially tracked across the web.

Beeing unique is bad, because that makes you an even better target.

Is there a plugin to remove or modify specific request headers? The bits of unique information could easily be removed, couldn't it?

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