Browser Fingerprinting
How unique is your browser?
Scientific research
Project has ended. Thank you for helping me collecting 23,709 datasets!
I am glad that you have visited this site. For the purposes of writing my diploma theses (computer science) I collected data, that can be retrieved by anyone hosting a website by using commonly used web technologies like JavaScript or Flash during November 15 to December 15, 2012. These sets of data consisted of screen resolution, your browser version, your installed fonts, etc. I am currently analyzing the data and writing the diploma thesis. I will publish my results (including raw data, source code) on my website sometime in spring 2013.
You can find more information on the research topic here (German). You can find articles about my project on ZEIT Online, heise online, golem.de and netzpolitik.org among others.
I am glad that you have visited this site. For the purposes of writing my diploma theses (computer science) I collect data, that can be retrieved by anyone hosting a website by using commonly used web technologies like JavaScript or Flash. These sets of data consist of screen resolution, your browser version, your installed fonts, etc. Later on your configuration will be compared to others to detect how “unique” your computer configuration is. Personal information, like your name or your location, will not be saved.
You can find more information on the research topic here (German). You can find articles about my project on ZEIT Online, heise online, golem.de and netzpolitik.org among others.
To take part in this project, no additional software or plugins are needed. Only data that can be retrieved on any website will be stored.
The following data will be gathered. Only data that is submitted automatically or can be retrieved by standard website scripting (JavaScript) will be collected and saved. Depending on your system configuration, the following data could be retrieved:
- Connection data (your IP address and your TCP port)
- HTTP header data (referral site, your browser name and description, accept-information)
- Additional browser information Browser-Informationen that can be collected via JavaScript (name, description, version, language, platform)
- Cookie support (yes/no)
- Your screen resolution and available screen space, color depth, pixel depth
- Java support (yes/no)
- Your timezone
- System colors
- Flash plugin version (if installed)
- Adobe Acrobat plugin version (if installed)
- Silverlight plugin version (if installed)
- Additional plugins (name, description, file name)
- Supported mime types (type name, description)
- List of installed fonts
Furthermore a cookie will be placed on your computer containing a unique identification number. This is needed to verify fingerprints later on. This project also tries to create a PNG image with a number coded into the available color channels. Other websites may contain this project as an embedded frame to support it. That is, a browser fingerprint for this project can be invoked from other sites as well, but these content provider do not have access to the data saved.
The entire diploma thesis, including source code of this project and all data that was gathered, will be publicly published. All IP addresses, font lists, plugin lists and mime type lists will be anonymized, i. e. it will not possible to actually see lists of installed fonts (only so-called hash values will be published).
CC-BY-SA Henning Tillmann | @henningtillmann | Legal Notice / Contact | Deutsche Version anzeigen