Things that make you go "Hmmmm…"

[axn]

FYI. 21.52 bits = log₂(3million). Which is basically a fancy way of saying that your browser can be uniquely identified (out of the 3 million tested).

For me, both the browser plugins and system fonts were unique by themselves. Which I am guessing is the same results for others as well?

[jasong]

I'm only about 12.5 bits, about 1 in 5000 people from the database match my information. Add the IP and they can probably figure out precisely who I am.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by axn

FYI. 21.52 bits = log₂(3million). Which is basically a fancy way of saying that your browser can be uniquely identified (out of the 3 million tested).

For me, both the browser plugins and system fonts were unique by themselves. Which I am guessing is the same results for others as well?

It included things like my graphics tablet, but come to think of it, what it's seeing is a Firefox plugin, too.

Another interesting place to check your visibility, and the "fingerprints" of sites you might visit is-

Gibson Research
https://www.grc.com/default.htm

Steve Gibson is a long-time internet security advocate. Check out ShieldsUp to see the status of your ports. See if your HTTPS connection is being intercepted at the fingerprint page. Put your passwords up against the Password Haystacks.

[only_human]

Also, A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry.

Evidon helps companies that want to improve their use of tracking code by selling them data collected from the eight million Ghostery users that have enabled a data-sharing feature in the tool.

That makes Evidon, which bought Ghostery in 2010, something of an anomaly in the complex world of online advertising. Whether in Congress or at the Web standards body W3C, debates over online privacy typically end up with the ad industry and privacy advocates facing off along clearly demarcated lines (see “High Stakes in Internet Tracking”).

I think that article spins it a bit too hard to the evil side. This article, Keeping Privacy Free for You (Whoever You Are), makes it sound much more reasonable. So they are making money selling anonymized data that they gather if you opt-in to Ghostery's Ghostrank setting. Since businesses are buying that data, clearly they find it useful to better target their markets. Time will tell, and even good products can suffer from feature/mission creep (such as when companies are bought or liquidated).

[retina]

Originally Posted by only_human

So they are making money selling anonymized data ...

There is no such thing as anonymised data except at the very extreme point of only giving out totals of categories or other such useless data. Most of the so-called anonymised data that is sold can still give away users details when companies cross reference against other sources. There are many examples of this happening, not the least of which was the famous yahoo "anonymised search data" that was used to uniquely locate and name individual people and expose their search histories.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by retina

There is no such thing as anonymised data except at the very extreme point of only giving out totals of categories or other such useless data. Most of the so-called anonymised data that is sold can still give away users details when companies cross reference against other sources. There are many examples of this happening, not the least of which was the famous yahoo "anonymised search data" that was used to uniquely locate and name individual people and expose their search histories.

true dat. This has been discussed about anonymized medical data too. I certainly am not opted in on Ghostrank.

[chappy]

merely knowing who people are, paradoxically, isn’t very predictive of their movie tastes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/ma...ewanted=1&_r=1

I'm no trouble for them, I either actively dislike or don't care about all the listed "trouble" movies.

Yet they still can't get my recommendations right.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by chappy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/ma...ewanted=1&_r=1

I'm no trouble for them, I either actively dislike or don't care about all the listed "trouble" movies.

Yet they still can't get my recommendations right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize
The very next year (after that article), the Netflix prize was won:

The Netflix Prize was an open competition for the best collaborative filtering algorithm to predict user ratings for films, based on previous ratings without any other information about the users or films, i.e. without the users or the films being identified except by numbers assigned for the contest.

On September 18, 2009, Netflix announced team "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos" as the prize winner (a Test RMSE of 0.8567), and the prize was awarded to the team in a ceremony on September 21, 2009.[22] "The Ensemble" team had in fact succeeded to match BellKor's result, but since BellKor submitted their results 20 minutes earlier, the rules award the prize to them.[23]

And there was a lawsuit over the dataset used in the contest:

Although the data sets were constructed to preserve customer privacy, the Prize has been criticized by privacy advocates. In 2007 two researchers from the University of Texas were able to identify individual users by matching the data sets with film ratings on the Internet Movie Database.[27]

On December 17, 2009, four Netflix users filed a class action lawsuit against Netflix, alleging that Netflix had violated U.S. fair trade laws and the Video Privacy Protection Act by releasing the datasets.[28] There was public debate about privacy for research participants. On March 19, 2010, Netflix reached a settlement with the plaintiffs, after which they voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit.[29]

[retina]

http://www.lamebook.com/wp-content/u...013/06/mmm.jpg

[rogue]

Periodic table of muppets

[Flatlander]

iOS Maps Glitches