In order to uniquely distinguish over time some devices through their fingerprints, the fingerprints must be both sufficiently diverse and sufficiently stable. Motivation for the device fingerprint concept stems from the forensic value of human fingerprints. The feature was first introduced to protect private browsing in 2015 and was then extended to standard browsing as an opt-in feature in 2018. In 2019, starting from Firefox version 69, Enhanced Tracking Protection has been turned on by default for all users also during non-private browsing. The same year a feature named Enhanced Tracking Protection was introduced in Firefox version 42 to protect against tracking during private browsing by blocking scripts from third party domains found in the lists published by Disconnect Mobile.Īt WWDC 2018 Apple announced that Safari on macOS Mojave "presents simplified system information when users browse the web, preventing them from being tracked based on their system configuration." Ī 2018 study revealed that only one-third of browser fingerprints in a French database were unique, indicating that browser fingerprinting may become less effective as the number of users increases and web technologies convergently evolve to implement fewer distinguishing features. In 2015, a feature to protect against browser fingerprinting was introduced in Firefox version 41, but it has been since left in an experimental stage, not initiated by default. The overwhelming majority (95%) of the scripts were served by AddThis, which started using canvas fingerprinting in January that year, without the knowledge of some of its clients. In 2014, 5.5% of Alexa top 10,000 sites were found to use canvas fingerprinting scripts served by a total of 20 domains. In 2013, at least 0.4% of Alexa top 10,000 sites were found to use fingerprinting scripts provided by a few known third parties. In 2012, Keaton Mowery and Hovav Shacham, researchers at University of California, San Diego, showed how the HTML5 canvas element could be used to create digital fingerprints of web browsers. After collecting a sample of 470161 fingerprints, they measured at least 18.1 bits of entropy possible from browser fingerprinting, but that was before the advancements of canvas fingerprinting, which claims to add another 5.7 bits. In 2010, Electronic Frontier Foundation launched a website where visitors can test their browser fingerprint. In 2005, researchers at University of California, San Diego showed how TCP timestamps could be used to estimate the clock skew of a device, and consequently to remotely obtain a hardware fingerprint of the device. Since its introduction in the late 1990s, client-side scripting has gradually enabled the collection of an increasing amount of diverse information, with some computer security experts starting to complain about the ease of bulk parameter extraction offered by web browsers as early as 2003. ( March 2020)īasic web browser configuration information has long been collected by web analytics services in an effort to measure real human web traffic and discount various forms of click fraud.
#Hardware fingerprint fake update#
Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. This may allow a service provider to detect and prevent identity theft and credit card fraud, : 299 but also to compile long-term records of individuals' browsing histories (and deliver targeted advertising : 821 : 9 or targeted exploits : 8 : 547 ) even when they are attempting to avoid tracking – raising a major concern for internet privacy advocates. : 878 : 1ĭevice fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual devices even when persistent cookies (and zombie cookies) cannot be read or stored in the browser, the client IP address is hidden, or one switches to another browser on the same device. A browser fingerprint is information collected specifically by interaction with the web browser of the device. The information is usually assimilated into a brief identifier using a fingerprinting algorithm.
#Hardware fingerprint fake full#
Information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of full or partial identificationĪ device fingerprint or machine fingerprint is information collected about the software and hardware of a remote computing device for the purpose of identification.