This is lame as shit. The tone of the writing is going to get non-tech people feeling quite dismissive, or scared enough to seek out surface level info, which just rolls back into feeling dismissive. It’s actually really stupid because they’re clearly driving fear, but hardly touch the real thing to be scared of. Fingerprinting is barely mentioned, it’s only really addressed once, in the font identification section. The issue with all these data points is how they can be collected and correlated across the web - it basically means fuck-all if it’s only from one page.
edit: On top of that, each data point is presented as some sort of horrible catastrophe, when some are completely benign. Barely addressing why some points actually matter, or not at all. (Like click/touch data, it’s needed for site functionality, but it gets creepy when that data is used for things like psychological profiling)
Even more disappointing because the formatting/appearance is more than clean enough to share with basically anyone. Yet the tone and focus makes that out of the question. What a waste of time to make this.
Laughing my ass off reading through this. The sanctimonious and passive aggressive threatening tone is perfect for how much info it got wrong just because I use Firefox and an adblock. YOUR BROWSER DIDN’T TELL US ANYTHING ABOUT THIS, LIKELY BECAUSE ITS FIREFOX. BUT THAT MEANS WE KNOW YOU USE FIREFOX AND WE ARE CHOOSING TO BE SAFE WITH THAT INFO, YOURE WELCOME, PWNED!!!11!1111!1
Teaching people about fingerprinting and how important understanding it is for personal privacy is good, but acting like a 4chan script kiddy group and making bizarre empty threats like you’re mr robot ain’t it, dawg.
From other comments this is likely some AI slop to sell a product, but if they’re serious they come off like they just slept through sec+ and think they’re shadow brokers now lmao
Similar results with NoScript.
This volume requires JavaScript. That is part of the point — your browser is what is being read.
With JavaScript off, the page cannot tell you what your browser disclosed. The data is still there. The disclosure still happened. Only the telling of it stops.
The fact that they’re stopped from “the telling” says a lot about their abilities, but not much about “the disclosure”.
I imagine it was just stuff collected in most server logs: IP Address, user agent string… I’m not too concerned, really.
Even bog standard ios hides some stuff they claim to have.
WHAT RENDERS YOUR WORLD
Apple GPU
Your graphics processor identified itself as Apple GPU. This tells us the manufacturer, the generation, and roughly the price of your machine. Combined with your screen size and font list, this string alone can distinguish your device from most others on the internet. The technique is called WebGL fingerprinting. No permission is required.
Uh sure, that string tells you the generation and price.
Well I am happy with my results… You ain’t gettin shit
Lol it says I have a “recent, high end device”… It’s a Samsung that’s old enough to be in the third grade.
Only thing that’s missing is a bunch of threats with a Bitcoin address at the bottom.
I’m guessing it has inferred that (wrongly) from your screen size and resolution.
That’s not a great datapoint, if that’s the case, there’s 2015 phones that are unnecessarily 4K (right when 4K TVs were becoming popular)
They’re really playing up the ominous tone.
“We know this because your IP address — xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx — was the first thing your device sent us. We know the rest of it. We chose not to display it. Most pages would not have made that choice. We did not ask for your location. Your address arrived before you did.”
Uh, yeah. That’s how IP addresses work.
I am pretty sure 90% of the people using the Internet don’t know what an IP address is.
Obvious, the address of where you pee.
127.0.0.1
Compare this to Google’s homepage, which is clean, wholesome, friendly, and inviting.
(I don’t mind sites that try to scare the user straight, but this one definitely has the unmistakable tinge of AI-generated wording. Make a sense if you click through the links at the bottom to see who created it.)
It really looks ai-generated. It even contains mistakes like saying that my 5yo phone model with low resolution is a high end device. All the text is pretty “generic” and sloppy
Yeah, a bit overly ominous. But my mom doesn’t know that’s how IP addresses work. And if it scares a bit more privacy mindedness into her, good.
Well yes, but most people don’t even know that part. I guess it’s not the worst thing to tell them?
Yes. You can either give them your real one, or not. That’s the point being made. Actually the point of the whole page is that just loading a website tells a huge amount about you, even if you are behind a vpn and extensions to minimize your fingerprint. You are a product for sale.
Didn’t realize my phone sent it’s rotation data without promoting, everything else is kind of needed to send me info.
My IP
My screen size
My interactions with the page
Yeah, the rotation was a bit of a surprise to me. Doesn’t seem like Waterfox has a setting to disable that, so I just disabled my browser’s access to the accelerometer and gyros entirely.
Now instead of cutting it off send fake data so it looks like your phone is in a blender.
Weird, this user’s gyro says the phone is angled at the entire Doom source code
I find it weird that the web operator decided to make it so rotation data only is publicly shown if your phone is actually laying down. Because if you’re holding it in the standard position, it doesn’t even announce that it collects it.
I wasn’t aware about the thing with fonts.
The location is off by about fifty miles. It didn’t get my GPU or battery level. Everything else is stuff that doesn’t matter. Firefox browser, English, android device. I am not terribly impressed.
You’re right, and same for me, but what if you’d never considered any of this before and are new to the idea of privacy? I expect it would then give you pause for thought.
Sure, it’s a gimmick site. But it serves a useful purpose for those who don’t know about the topic. Which is probably the majority of users.
Despite my own experience: TIL the tilt angle of my phone is available to websites.
Try Deviceinfo.me
Your finger moved 273 times. You tapped 14 times.
I’m sorry what?
Since they went into the effort to make this sound so ominous, it’d be cool to see some actual inferences from the data points. For example it would be pretty easy to tell you are behind a VPN and your real location is probably xyz.
They knew i was on a vpn and the time zone, your phone just gives that shit up
Dont even get me started on “experimental” browser flags that come default on some browsers
We know your full name, blood type, and that your left elbow is itching a bit right now. Your browser told us. But we’re choosing to not show you. We also know what you did on July 14, 2018.
It’s a light version of what websites apps collect
Seems to be making a lot out of “you send your user agent and screen resolution”.
There is a looot more than that lol. Usually enough to allow them to uniquely fingerprint every device on earth.
There were a couple of things on that page that were novel to me. “Only a couple” made it worthwhile though:
- There’s a free tier to a service that gives you geolocation data from an IP address
- This site counts the number of times you move to a different tab
I didnt mean this site specifically just in general.
See this site for something more technical. Takes a while to process everything give it a minute.
I couldn’t help but notice this is volume 4. Where and what are the other volumes out of mad curiosity?
They link them on the bottom of the page.
