Report: Browsers Still Leave Your Fingerprint

Your browser is currently leaking your info as you read this heading.

Despite the great lengths many Internet users might take to protect their identities and habits online, a recent study conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) suggests that web browsers are still leaving unique user "fingerprints" wherever they go. Although the info can be as little as simple browser configurations and versions, the information is still considered identifiable and classified in the same category as IP addresses, cookies, and supercookies.

According to the EFF, the company analyzed "anonymized" data taken from around 500,000 distinct browsers. The group discovered that 85-percent of these browsers had unique configurations--the number increased to 94-percent thanks to the inclusion of Java and Flash. "Our experiment only studied a limited number of variables, and the companies that offer specialized fingerprinting services are likely to use a wider and therefore more powerful range of measurements," the EFF said.

So what needs to be done to reduce our Internet fingerprints? Unfortunately, not a whole lot. The EFF suggests that users disable JavaScript for starters. The group also said that users of TorButton had a high success rate as well as mobile surfers and corporate desktop machines that are precise clones of one another. However the EFF called on browser developers to step up and "take the lead of defending their users against this particularly troublesome form of tracking."

Will there ever really be Internet anonymity? Probably not. Web surfers may just need to accept the fact that their details are leaked all over the World Wide Web, or close the browser and go back to reading paper-based books and playing Dungeons & Dragons on the kitchen table.