The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new web app dubbed Panopticlick that reveals just how scarily easy it is to identify you out of millions of web users.

The problem is your digital fingerprint. Whenever you visit a site, your browser and any plug-ins you have installed can leak data. Some of it isn’t very personal, like your user agent string. Some of it is more
personally revealing, like which fonts you have installed. But the what
if you put it all together? Would the results make you identifiable?

As the EFF says, “this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer.”

The EFF’s test suite highlights what most of us probably already suspect — we’re readily identifiable on the web. We ran the test on a Mac using Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, all of which leaked enough
data to make us identifiable according the EFF’s privacy explanations.

The purpose of Panopticlick is to show you how much you have in common with other browsers. The more your configuration mirrors everyone else’s, the harder it would be to identify you. The irony is,
the nerdier you are — using a unique OS, a less common browser,
customizing your browser with plug-ins and other power-user habits —
the more identifiable you are.

For example, say you’re running Firefox on Ubuntu with the Gnash plug-in instead of Flash — way to stick it to the man — but you’re also showing up with a unique configuration of browser, OS, installed fonts,
plug-ins and more which can be combined to identify you via a unique
online fingerprint.

So what can you do to make yourself less identifiable? Well, by disabling cookies, the Flash plug-in, the Java plug-in and most of our extensions we were able to blend in better. Actually, the fact that we
didn’t have Java or Flash turned on made us more identifiable in those
categories, but it also denied the test access to our installed fonts
and other bits of data, so overall, less identifiable.

Obviously that approach has a downside — without Flash there’s not much in the way of online video, a lack of cookies will cause issues with logins, and without Java, you won’t be able to crash your browser
or cause it to get hung up for hours.

In short, the disabling method isn’t much fun. Strange though it may seem, the best way to lose the unique online fingerprint is to blend in with the herd. As the EFF points out, mobile browsers are hardest to
identify since there are few customization options and, for the most
part, one version of Mobile Safari looks just like another.

By the same token, if you want to blend in, stick with stock system fonts, run Windows XP, use Firefox with no add-ons and turn off cookies. You’ll be much harder to identify.

We should point out that, no matter how well you blend in the fingerprint test, you are of course still identifiable by your ISP. Advertisers and websites generally can’t access the information your
ISP has on you, but of course governments — with the cooperation of
your ISP — always can. So don’t think just because you’ve eliminated
your fingerprints no one knows who you are.