Your Browsing History Can Uniquely Identify You (schneier.com) 32
An anonymous reader writes:
Researchers from Mozilla report in a study that web browsing histories (the lists of user visited websites) are uniquely identifying users (PDF). In their study that was the case for 99% of users. Treating web browsing histories like fingerprints, the researchers analysed how the users can be reidentified just based on the coarsened list of user-visited websites.
In doing so they upheld and confirmed a previous study from 2012, prompting the author of the original study to say that web browsing histories are now personal data subject to privacy regulations like the GDPR.
Sensitivity of web browsing history data questions the laws allowing ISPs to sell web browsing histories.
The now-vindicated author of the 2012 study added this emphatic note in their blog post. "Web browsing histories are personal data. Deal with it."
In doing so they upheld and confirmed a previous study from 2012, prompting the author of the original study to say that web browsing histories are now personal data subject to privacy regulations like the GDPR.
Sensitivity of web browsing history data questions the laws allowing ISPs to sell web browsing histories.
The now-vindicated author of the 2012 study added this emphatic note in their blog post. "Web browsing histories are personal data. Deal with it."
Since we can't stop them collecting data (Score:2)
Let's place heavy penalties on its use. All we can do is take away their advantage. Time to get creative!
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Or you could skip your ISPs DNS server and use DNS over TLS + DNSSEC. That makes it borderline impossible for them to truly track your web browsing.
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Temporary short term measures only work as long as they are not widely adopted. It will always be cat and mouse. Eventually comes deep packet inspections, then all bets are off. You will use only the ISPs approved white list of protocols and services and websites.
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"Browser History".
It is collected before it ever goes near any network... by the browser. Tweaking DNS will do absolutely nothing.
Fucking Brilliant Sherlock (Score:2)
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Don't be a Beer Fart, Moron.
Most Hated Feature (Score:5, Funny)
Be Me, 2002. Furiously browsing porn on ie6. Hey you're young and it was that dark time between Netscape and Firefox.
Hears car
"OH shit!"
Goes to internet options, clear history.
"Phew, safe!"
Except there's a bug where the history won't clear and now you're furiously clearing 500 plus pages of porn by right clicking and deleting.
Seriously, most hated feature and IE6 is still the world's shittiest browser.
how to prevent websites (Score:4, Insightful)
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I clear my history often (Score:1)
It's weird because when I visit some sites they accuse me of using an ad blocker. No, I just clear history after I visit a site and before I go to the next one.
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History and cookies.
I got our company's proxy server IP blocked by the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] once. I visited the site a couple of times, clearing history and cookies between visits. So instead of getting the 'you only have 2 free articles to read' nag screen, they popped up 'There appears to be something suspicious going on on your system'. And refused to serve up any more pages. The company grapevine said that everything at our office was blocked. Much to the chagrin of the Bleeding Hearts department. Who appar
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It's easier to turn on incognito mode, nothing to clear.
I've been saying this for the longest time... (Score:4, Interesting)
My coworkers laughed a decade ago but I proposed an "internet white noise" generator that would constant generate web and internet traffic so that this could be incorporated into not just your browsing history but as well as your over all internet traffic, or "signal" that is generated from your particular IP address. In doing so, your traffic, even if it's captured would be hard to analyze since there is so much traffic and noise to account for.
If everyone visited whitehouse.com and pornhub.com how could you really tell who is really visiting whitehouse.com and pornhub.com. For that matter, who really knows for sure who is "problematic" and who isn't?
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And just to mess with them a bit, once in a while you throw whitepornhousehub.com and pornwhitehubhouse.com in the list.
This is not new (Score:5, Informative)
A few people ware identified precisely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This is why I spend all day on Pornhub (Score:2)
They won't want to uniquely identify me by my browsing history.
Set your browser to delete everything on closing (Score:2)
And use a fucking VPN.
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Set your browser to delete everything on closing
Doesn't really help. If someone's in your local browser history, they're probably in your whole hard drive. In which case, being IDed from your browser history is the least of your problems. Deleting your browser history etc does nothing to stop your ISP eavesdropping. Which brings us neatly to...
And use a fucking VPN.
Okay, so give it all to your VPN provider instead of your ISP. And you trust the VPN more than your ISP, why? Again, nothing solved.
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History can be derived by what images you already have cached, to name one single vector. Deleting the cache upon closure is a valid way of improving privacy.
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History can be derived by what images you already have cached, to name one single vector. Deleting the cache upon closure is a valid way of improving privacy.
Again, only if somebody's already got your hard drive. In which case they already know who you are. Because they're the cops, and they got that hard drive from that time when they raided your house.
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If you load a page that contains the image "1471_Rule_34.png" and your browser downloads every other image on the page except that one, the server can infer information about your cache from that. This is of course a gross oversimplification, but should serve as an example of the kinds of tricks people can pull.
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They know all this about me, yet.... (Score:2, Funny)
Nope. Mine gets deleted (Score:3)
And my browser does not send it anywhere before that. Anything potentially controversial, also in the future, I use a write-protected Tails stick for. You never know whether your country will have fascist or other authoritarian tendencies in 20 years (or much sooner). And you may even move to a different country with the same issue. Data like browsing history may get you killed or imprisoned. If not now, then later.
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Probably not (Score:2)
No kidding! (Score:2, Funny)
stop, what, ISP can sell browsing history??? (Score:1)
when did this come into effect, please?
is there a list of who is selling what?
is this "only in america" or worse?