EFF researches Web browser tracking

Do you ever wonder what fingerprints your browser leaves behind as you surf the web?

Peter Eckersley from the EFF comments: “Traditionally, people assume they can prevent a website from identifying them by disabling cookies on their web browser. Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer’s configuration. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be?”

EFF’s new website Panopticlick will anonymously log the configuration and version information from your operating system, your browser, and your plug-ins, and compare it to our database of five million other configurations.

Then, it will give you a uniqueness score — letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.