Spying Without Cookies
from the real-or-not? dept
Alexis Agahi writes "Of course, the quest of "we know what you are, and where you go" is still interesting lots of guys out there. ZDNet mention in this article that after 18 month of research, Dr. Lykourgos Petropoulakis from the University of Strathclyde, has found a new technology currently "highly classified". Apparently this technology doesn't require any browser plug-in, can work on any web server and could monitor all web users behaviors, without using cookies. Also, people could be tracked from site to site. Applications envisioned are things like employee or child monitoring." I read about this last week, and I'm not yet convinced (1) that it works or (2) that it's really that big of a deal. I'm willing to wait and see if it's really as bad as it sounds, and whether or not anyone actually uses it.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
18 months ... yeah sure
my technique works as follows: the behavior of a browser will be different based on whether an object is present in the browser's cache. If-Modified-Since makes it even more trivial. works as a transparent proxy by changing modification times on objects that pass it. each user request on certain objects will leak a small number of information bits that can be assembled to a unique identifier.
i would not be surprised if 18 months of super-secret research produced little more exciting than this. if i had not better things to do i'd write a paper on it or file a patent :PPP
--fmu
[ link to this | view in thread ]