{"id":17945,"date":"2014-07-23T10:17:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T17:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=17945"},"modified":"2014-07-23T10:17:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T17:17:06","slug":"canvas-fingerprinting-and-evercookies-something-new-to-beware-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/23\/canvas-fingerprinting-and-evercookies-something-new-to-beware-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Canvas fingerprinting and evercookies: something new to beware of"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have been hearing about it since yesterday: the new way<\/a> of profiling your computer (and, with enough other data, you) without leaving either traditional cookies or flash cookies on your system.<\/p>\n

Those cookies you can get rid of. The new “evercookie” you can’t even see — although your own system created it on orders from a site or sites you visited.<\/p>\n

The underlying technique is “canvas fingerprinting.”<\/a> Here’s some not-too-geeky info on how it works<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Using TOR apparently helps, but not completely. Firefox’s wonderful NoScript add-on does the trick. It prevents a nasty little company called AddThis from executing its scripts on your device. However, I’m not clear whether other sites you’ve previously marked as trusted can execute the same script on you even if you’ve blocked AddThis. <\/p>\n

Lots of big sites are using the evercookie technology. They then sell the info to advertisers — apparently even if you’ve set all kinds of “do not tracks” and opt outs. Some sites (Hey, we’re talking to you, WhiteHouse.gov!) use the technology counter to their own stated privacy policies<\/a>. Yes, they’re lying to you. What a shock, eh?<\/p>\n

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed a countermeasure called Privacy Badger<\/a> and is asking people to help them test it. They also recommend Disconnect<\/a> as another possible method.<\/p>\n

Of course, we know by now that merely having privacy settings on your computer makes you suspect. And we know that you can create your own unique fingerprint merely by having privacy software and settings, using non-standard browsers, etc. <\/p>\n

Still … just one more thing to know about beware of.<\/p>\n

Geeks, please chime in if you have better info.<\/p>\n

(H\/T JG)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have been hearing about it since yesterday: the new way of profiling your computer (and, with enough other data, you) without leaving either traditional cookies or flash cookies on your system. Those cookies you can get rid of. The new “evercookie” you can’t even see — although your own system created it on orders from a site or sites you visited. The underlying technique is “canvas fingerprinting.” Here’s some not-too-geeky info on how it works. Using TOR apparently helps, but not completely. Firefox’s wonderful NoScript add-on does the trick. It prevents a nasty little company called AddThis from…<\/p>\n

Continue readingCanvas fingerprinting and evercookies: something new to beware of<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-and-technology","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}