- From: <rob@blaeu.com>
- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:06:57 +0100 (CET)
- To: "Tracking Protection Working Group WG" <public-tracking@w3.org>
>> It is both possible to uniquely identify a user agent but not a user (example: fingerprinting a specific web browser, but no idea which household member is using it at a particular time) Now that internet is becoming more and more accessible from mobile devices, it is safe to argue that it is possible to uniquely identify a human with fingerprinting, for the specific web browser will be tied to the mobile device you are carrying. Rob Aleecia M. McDonald wrote: > > On Dec 13, 2011, at 8:56 PM, Shane Wiley wrote: > >> Jonathan, >> >> If you feel by not adding user agent that this somehow creates a >> loop-hole that companies will attempt to thwart to avoid DNT, then I'm >> okay (reluctantly) putting user agent back in the language although this >> feels wasteful. > > Really quickly for those playing our home game: > A user -> a human > A user agent -> usually a web browser (ex: Internet Explorer) > A user-agent string -> a text description a user agent can send about > itself (ex: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)") > > It is both possible to uniquely identify a user agent but not a user > (example: fingerprinting a specific web browser, but no idea which > household member is using it at a particular time) or to uniquely identify > a user but not a user agent (example: a user logs in to a website over > time from various computers in a public library, Starbucks, etc.). > > The people contributing to this thread seem to understand, but even with a > little prior discussion there may be a few readers who did not. > > Aleecia > > >
Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 08:07:33 UTC