None of this is news. That entire blog post looks like it written to appeal to someone who spent the last 30 years not asking how the internet works then freaking out after realizing what is possible. No joke, I read the following quote from that article and nearly fell out of my chair.
"What’s ironic about device fingerprinting is that the more privacy-centered add-ons you install on your browser (e.g. Privacy Badger, Do Not Track Me, Ghostery to name a few) in a bid to protect the remnants of your privacy, the easier it becomes to identify you because of the uniqueness of your browser’s configuration." ROFLMAO. It's so brilliantly stupid that it cannot be refuted by logical means. That whole article is an accurate example of human intelligence after decades of inadvertent lead exposure. Nice. -Ben ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, February 26th, 2023 at 10:21 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt <t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote: > Why is this even necessary to look at nonsense like the plugins, both HP, > Dell, and Lenovo computers make their motherboard serial numbers available > via BIOS calls and those serial numbers are unique. Hard disks also have > unique serial numbers and of course the LAN MAC addresses and Bluetooth > BD_ADDR are unique. The machine's ARP cache is not protected either so if > they really want to fingerprint they can look at the netmask in use, setup a > loop and ping every IP in the network then pull all the MAC addresses out of > the ARP cache and then if they really want to get clever they can match the > MACs and see if any other machines on the local network that they have > fingerprints for are online. > > The entire hoo-ha over Intel putting serial numbers in it's CPUs a few years > back was complete baloney, a red herring to distract the masses. > > The clearcode article is just barely scraping the surface and what they say > is being collected sounds like amateur hour. > > Ted > > -----Original Message----- > From: PLUG [mailto:plug-boun...@lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Michael > Rasmussen > Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2023 10:46 AM > To: Portland Linux/Unix Group p...@pdxlinux.org > > Subject: Re: [PLUG] [PLUG-TALK] How do web servers identify visitor devices? > > > > Fingerprint computes avail themselfs to a variety of items that, taken > together, come close to uniquely identifing your computer. > > From: > https://clearcode.cc/blog/device-fingerprinting/#What-information-is-collected-to-create-a-device-fingerprint > > They list: > > * IP address > * HTTP request headers > * User agent string > * Installed plugins > * Client time zone > * Information about the client device: screen resolution, touch support, > operating system and language > * Flash data provided by a Flash plugin > * List of installed fonts > * Silverlight data > * List of mime-types > > For more information you can check out the description of it on > Wikipedia: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint > > * Timestamp > * > > -- > > Michael Rasmussen > Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
