News Evercookie will track you down

**** you, mister Kamkar.

 

DO NOT WANT!

 

eSCUM Bags....

 

Seriously, what an asshole.

 

I would suggest that a bigger threat is browser fingerprinting, since that doesn't require any information to be stored on the user's PC. See EFF's Primer on Information Theory and Privacy for more details.

The only way to avoid this would be to use a proxy server in conjunction with a web filter - connecting via the Tor network using Firefox with the TorButton extension (which includes filtering measures to block such tracking) would be the easiest option for most.

Nonetheless, having this technique publicised is good - odds are that an advertiser/marketer out there is already using it, so knowing how to defeat it is in the public interest.

 

Guy's I found a solution. Just do an OS reinstall after going on the web.
Seriously finding this is not something to be proud. The only good point is that thank to the available source code maybe somebody will a way of protecting private our private life against this.

 

What... so you guys don't browser in a secure VM with a virtual hard drive that gets purged when you restart it? For shame!

 

Assume no privacy. Ever.

 

Both.

 

This.

 

Agreed. What does he think he's doing?!?!

 

Increasing awareness of the security flaws in browers would be my guess.

Seriously though, why does anyone care. Your filmed on loads of cameras everyday, every time you swipe your card your spending patterns and movements are monitored, your channel viewing habits can be traced, your IP address follows you everywhere you go, but very few of us are important enough for anyone to really care what we do, it just doesn't matter. If you are important enough, then there's a whole bunch of other stuff monitoring you that you should be more worried about.

 

Pfft.... this has been done for a while now, it's only the large amount of vectors that makes this newsworthy. Not only that, you remember the identify a unique browser thing a short while back? Yeah... that's been integrated into techniques like this too. It's kind of funny seeing you all go wah wah over this, there are much worse things afoot, if only you knew.

 

More likely he is looking for publicity. So far I'd say he's been succesful in that respect.

 

I'm not bothered about the privacy issues. I'm not that bothered who has my details or sees me walking through the street... I have nothing to hide.

It's the possibility of it being used for malicious purposes that I don't like... Something that can potentially harm my PC to the point of it being unusable, as well as being un-deletable? NO. THANK YOU.

 

I only use internet for bit-tech, games and pron got NOTIN to hide!

 

Opera's "Private Browsing" mode seems to beat this as well, without having to restart to clear everything.

 

I like some of the responses on this page calling him a douche etc. Perhaps you idiots would prefer the web browser developers to have no clue about these methods and no code to analyse?

Most of these methods are probably already being employed anyway so I suppose we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore the problem.

 

for the developers it "may" be good, but he also has potentially given it to people who will actually abuse it. imo there are other ways he could have voiced out these issues with developers rather than distributing sample code.

 

the only real way you'll get people to look into things like this in terms of security is if you publish data to the public...
think it isn't? look at Microsoft and several other companies, most of the time when some sort of nasty "bug" comes out they had already been warned months if not up to a year in advance, they only end up working on it when it's out there...
this guy did a good thing, he's putting pressure on the developers to make sure that the public is safe from something like this in a propper time.