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A comment on Vulnerability allows cross-browser tracking in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Tor. Parent comment

Re:Vulnerability allows cross-browser tracking in Chrome, Fi... by yjftsjthsd-h on Thursday May 13, 2021 @04:41PM (#27147166)
Yeah, it gave me quite a list of programs, including xcode and itunes, which is fascinating on a Linux box... they list 20 programs they think I have installed, of which I actually have 2. I'm not sure why it would be so inaccurate, but I feel better...
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Re:Vulnerability allows cross-browser tracking in Chrome, Fi... by nolok on Thursday May 13, 2021 @04:52PM (#27147299)
> I'm not sure why it would be so inaccurate, but I feel better...

I don't think you understood the core of the issue: it's not about identifying which applications you have installed, it's about always getting the same result for the same user. If all your browsers serve the same results, you are trackable, no matter if those results are good or not.

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Re:Vulnerability allows cross-browser tracking in Chrome, Fi... by filmfact on Thursday May 13, 2021 @05:29PM (#27147702)
I think the implication is that this is far fewer bits of entropy than the authors indicate. Four bits (in isolation), are not a meaningful identifer.
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Re:Vulnerability allows cross-browser tracking in Chrome, Fi... by nolok on Thursday May 13, 2021 @06:15PM (#27148175)
It's not four, the fact that the others applications are reliably detected as not present are additional bits.
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