Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Is Your Browser Compromising Your Privacy?

It is a fact of life that many websites use cookies on our computer to track our behavior.  Protecting our privacy by stopping those cookies from getting on our system takes work.  However, even the best system can still be vulnerable to other methods of identification.  One area where your privacy could be compromised is through your browser.

When we communicate with a website, we usually only think about the things that we see on the screen.  We type in an address "amazon.com", and we think our computer goes and gets the latest statuses from Facebook.  However, Amazon's servers request more information so that they can send the site in a way that is readable by your computer.

The Panopticlick site by the Electronic Frontier Foundation will tell you how unique your browser is based on a variety of values you send to every site you visit.  Even when you use a proxy service, a VPN, or Tor to mask your computer's identity, your browser fingerprint could still give you away.  According to Panopticlick's site, only 1 in 2.67 million browsers have a fingerprint identical to mine.

You can test the uniqueness of your browser at the Panopticlick site by clicking here.

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