For example, client identifiers could be encoded as a combination of several seemingly innocuous and reasonable cookie names, or could be stored in metadata such as paths, domains, or cookie expiration times. That said, the mechanism may be used to tag clients without the use of cookie values that obviously resemble unique IDs. It should be noted that the existing implementations of this setting will assign the “first-party” label to any cookies set by documents intentionally navigated to by the user, as well as to ones issued by content loaded by the browser as a part of full-page interstitials, HTTP redirects, or click-triggered pop-ups.Ĭompared to most other mechanisms discussed below, overt use of HTTP cookies is fairly transparent to the user. Some browsers offer user-configurable restrictions on the ability for websites to set “third-party” cookies (that is, cookies coming from a domain other than the one currently displayed in the address bar - a behavior most commonly employed to serve online ads or other embedded content). The reasons for this are probably complex, but one of them may be that the removal of cookies tends to be disruptive: contemporary browsers do not provide any heuristics to distinguish between the session cookies that are needed to access the sites the user is logged in, and the rest. In practice, however, external research has implied that only a minority of users regularly review or purge browser cookies.
#Chromium vs chrome tracking software#
In essence, any web server may issue unique identifiers to first-time visitors as a part of a HTTP response, and have the browser play back the stored values on all future requests to a particular site.Īll major browsers have for years been equipped with UIs for managing cookies a large number of third-party cookie management and blocking software is available, too.
HTTP cookies are the most familiar and best-understood method for persisting data on the client. After reviewing the known tracking and fingerprinting techniques, we also discuss potential directions for future work and summarize some of the challenges that browser and other software vendors would face trying to detect or prevent such behaviors on the Web.
We divided the methods discussed on this page into several categories: explicitly assigned client-side identifiers, such as HTTP cookies inherent client device characteristics that identify a particular machine and measurable user behaviors and preferences that may reveal the identity of the person behind the keyboard (or touchscreen). Website owners should keep in mind that any single tracking technique may be conceivably seen as inappropriate, depending on user expectations and other complex factors beyond the scope of this doc. Note that we describe these vectors, but do not wish this document to be interpreted as a broad invitation to their use. To guide us in improving the range of existing browser controls and to highlight the potential pitfalls when designing new web APIs, we decided to prepare a technical overview of known tracking and fingerprinting vectors available in the browser. Many of them - in particular, various methods of client fingerprinting - have garnered concerns from software vendors, standards bodies, and the media. Other practices may be less known, may not necessarily map to existing browser controls, and may be impossible or difficult to detect. In the same vein, the online advertising industry has used cookies as the primary client identification technology since the mid-1990s. For example, they are frequently employed to tell real users from malicious bots, to make it harder for attackers to gain access to compromised accounts, or to store user preferences on a website.
Some uses of such tracking techniques are well established and commonplace. In most cases, this is done for the purpose of correlating future visits from the same person or machine with historical data. In common use, the term “web tracking” refers to the process of calculating or assigning unique and reasonably stable identifiers to each browser that visits a website.
0 kommentar(er)
