Cookieless Web Tracking Using HTTP's ETag 212
An anonymous reader writes "There is a growing interest in who tracks us, and many folks are restricting the use of web cookies and Flash to cut down how advertisers (and others) can track them. Those things are fine as far as they go, but some sites are using the ETag header as an identifier: Attentive readers might have noticed already how you can use this to track people: the browser sends the information back to the server that it previously received (the ETag). That sounds an awful lot like cookies, doesn't it? The server can simply give each browser an unique ETag, and when they connect again it can look it up in its database. Neither JavaScript, nor any other plugin, has to be enabled for this to work either, and changing your IP is useless as well. The only usable workaround seems to be clearing one's cache, or using private browsing with HTTPS on sites where you don't want to be tracked. The Firefox add-on SecretAgent also does ETag overwriting."
Re:Firefox makes cache clearing difficult (Score:5, Funny)
Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+Del. One of the options (which should already be checked if you used it last time) is to clear the cache. A three-key combination and a button click and you're done, with no plugins needed.
I also like the Ctrl+Alt+Del option. I've yet to see a website that can track me after that.
Re:They just don't seem to get the message (Score:5, Funny)
E-Tag! That has to work, right?
ARGH!!!!!
Gee... I wonder if he's trying to tell me something like, oh I don't know, "I don't like being tracked".
By this point you are being tracked as the guy that blocked everything else. There is only going to be one of you.