[artinfo] Panopticlick

[Janos Sugar]

What fingerprints does your browser leave behind as you surf the web?
Traditionally, people assume they can prevent a website from 
identifying them by disabling cookies on their web browser. 
Unfortunately, this is not the whole story.
When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot 
of information about your computer's configuration. Combined, this 
information can create a kind of fingerprint - a signature that could 
be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would 
this kind of online tracking be?
EFF is running an experiment to find out. Our new website 
Panopticlick will anonymously log the configuration and version 
information from your operating system, your browser, and your 
plug-ins, and compare it to our database of five million other 
configurations. Then, it will give you a uniqueness score - letting 
you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.
https://panopticlick.eff.org
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/help-eff-research-web-browser-tracking