The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit, international organization founded in America. This foundation has various activities, including providing funding for legal defense in courts, providing information for courts, defending individuals and new technologies against legal threats that are baseless or misleading, exposing government misconduct, guiding governments and courts, organizing political activities and mass letters, supporting new technologies that claim to preserve civil liberties, maintaining a database and websites that provide relevant information, monitoring and challenging legislation that violates political freedom and fair use, and compiling a list of what is considered patent abuse in order to eliminate those who are undeserving.

In this article, we will introduce one of the research projects of this foundation called “PanoptiClick” which is focused on the topic of user tracking through “browser fingerprinting” and ways to protect privacy in the virtual space.

This project is designed to identify tools and techniques for online trackers and test the effectiveness of privacy protection extensions.

When you visit a website, you are allowing that website to access a lot of information about your computer’s configuration and settings. If this information is combined, it forms a type of fingerprint of you, like a signature that can be used to identify you and your computer. Some companies use this technology to identify personal computers.

In 2010, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched the Panopticlick project; a research project to investigate how unique each internet browser is. The researchers at this foundation collected and compared information about the configuration and operating system version, browser, and plugins of users. This research led to unique results showing how easily users can be identified while browsing the web.

In 2015, these researchers updated the project Penopticlick by adding a tracker blocker test. Millions of internet users are currently using tracker blocking extensions such as AdBlock, Ghostery, and Disconnect.

But to what extent will these extensions protect users from malicious tracking?

The new version of Panoptyclick investigates in both cases. This research analyzes the level of privacy protection for users from online tracking with the type of protection used. This experiment involves simulating the loading of a visible advertisement that performs tracking, an invisible script that performs tracking, and a website that appears superficially like a tracker but actually follows the “do not track” directive.

Even if your privacy extensions work well, if your browser fingerprint is unique, you may still be vulnerable. Therefore, Panopticlick analyzes the uniqueness of your browser and compares it with other website visitors.

Penoptically creating a report on protecting tracking and fingerprinting for the desired user and also using some of this report anonymously in its overall report.

The experiments conducted on Panopticlick provide you with information about your browser and help EFF assess the tracking capabilities of online advertisers using statistical methods, ultimately evaluating the best way to protect against unauthorized tracking. (1).

System of methods.

Penopticlick uses multiple tracking simulation domains to employ tracker blockers. Some blockers do this based on URL parameters, while others do it based on each domain. Penopticlick tries to include tested domains in the list of these blockers. Of course, there are other blockers that use an exploratory approach like “Privacy Badger” to block their entry by identifying them when using a domain.

In order to identify different approaches, we have simulated a type of tracking called panopticleek, which applies all three models of blocking.

What is a fingerprint? What does a unique browser mean?

“Browser fingerprinting” is a method of tracking web browsers that displays configuration information and settings for websites instead of traditional tracking methods such as IP addresses and unique cookies.

Browser fingerprint is difficult to identify and cannot be neutralized under any circumstances.

When you load a web page, you automatically provide specific information about your browser to that website. This information can even be shared with other websites that advertise on that page. The website can use Java, Flash, and other methods to analyze your browser information; such as what language you are using and what extensions are installed on your browser. After that, the website may create a type of profile of your browser instead of using a specific cookie for tracking.

If your browser is unique, the tracking site can identify you without using tracking cookies. While the tracking site does not know your name, it can collect very personal information about you from the websites you visit in the form of a file.

In this situation, clearing cookies cannot help; because the configuration settings of your browser have been analyzed.

Can you protect yourself against browser fingerprinting?

Browser fingerprinting is a highly effective method for tracking users across the internet. There are protective measures that can be used with current browsers, but none are ideal. In practice, the best option is to use a “Tor browser.” For everyday tasks, there are also extensions designed for this purpose that can be used.

1- Using the Tor browser.

2- Installing a blocker extension such as “Privacy Badger” (3).

3- Disabling JavaScript, which is a powerful tool against browser fingerprinting, as it blocks their general method of collecting information. Unfortunately, this method is limiting and the presence of JavaScript is necessary for the proper functioning of many websites.

4- Using a universal browser can protect the browser’s fingerprint. A standard and widely used browser. You may think choosing this browser is difficult. But the best option here is the Google Chrome browser installed on a new Windows system.

Notes:

1. For more information on this matter, refer to the research report.

   How unique is your browser.“

2. For more information on this matter, refer to the report.

   An Introduction to Information Theory and Privacy Preservation.“

3. To install Privacy BJR RK.

   Website.

   Electronic border.