Defeat Behaviometrics

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by Lyx, Sep 23, 2015.

  1. Lyx

    Lyx Registered Member

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    Behaviometrics is a huge threat for privacy and anonymity. You can be tracked even if other people use the same computer as you, it is easy for a web site to associate how you tyoe to what you type, and Tor or VPN are no help.

    But here comes an interesting chrome extension: Keyboard Privacy. This extension interferes with the periodicity of everything you enter into a website.

    Further explanations: https://paul.reviews/behavioral-profiling-the-password-you-cant-change
     
  2. deBoetie

    deBoetie Registered Member

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    It's not only keystroke timings, there are many other behavioural "tells" that are indicative (in conjunction with other fingerprinting techniques associated with machines and browsers). For example, I read a book called "the secret life of pronouns" by James Pennebaker, where people are fairly individual in the way in which they use "invisible" pronouns or filler words. If you add to that word frequencies (especially favorite words, misspellings etc) - you can use it to guess authorship. I have no doubt that stuff is being deployed by the usual agencies.
    So this plugin needs to be supplemented with something that randomises these things, with lookups to a thesaurus etc - could be very entertaining!
    And then there's the stuff around temporal activity patterns, when the person does this and that. So we need robotic agents doing random browsing too.
    And then there's things like peoples' tab collections, which would fetch a pretty unique cluster of traffic when they start up.
    It goes on....
    My feeling is that true anonymity cannot be had with low-latency interactive communications.
     
  3. Reality

    Reality Registered Member

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    Thanks for this thread Lyx. Great reading from the link, all amounting to yet more sneaky foul tricks :thumbd:

    Great post deBoetie. I wouldn't mind hearing more on the it-goes-on... part. We can never hear enough about this diabolical practice.

    When he was mentioning mouse movements, does that simply mean they actually see how you inadvertently move the mouse around on the screen while not actually using it? What about if you did all your typing in something like wordpad, would that circumvent this profiling? Is there a firefox equivalent plugin?
     
  4. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    I tend to write in a local text editor, and then paste into post windows. But then, that's probably part of my fingerprint. But anyway, when I'm truly aiming to obfuscate, I run through multiple translations, back and forth among languages that I more-or-less know, in Tor browsers in different Whonix VMs. Then I paste the result. But mostly not in English, except for Mirimir-associated personas.
     
  5. Reality

    Reality Registered Member

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    I try and remember to do that Mirimir, so posts don't go into cyberland as they sometimes can do -- now I have another good reason to do it. Here's another reason (slightly OT,) but has anyone noticed the faint "saved draft" message that comes up in the bottom right corner, as you're typing in the reply box here at Wilders? I wonder if these are deleted?
     
  6. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    They're not deleted immediately. Sometimes I've decided not to post, after starting a reply, and then later come back to the same thread. And I've found my draft still there :eek: But that could be a feature, I suppose ;)
     
  7. JRViejo

    JRViejo Super Moderator

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    Reality & mirimir, it's an auto Save Draft forum feature, accessed via the Floppy Disk icon, found in the rich/javascript editor. The Saved Draft only lasts for 24 hours.

    If one decides not to post reply, the saved draft can be immediately deleted via that same icon. This feature works well when composing a long post, allowing a member to re-edit the reply within that 24 hour time frame.
     
  8. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Oh, that's what that icon does :rolleyes:

    Thanks for the clarification, sir :thumb:
     
  9. JRViejo

    JRViejo Super Moderator

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    mirimir, you're welcome! Take care.
     
  10. Reality

    Reality Registered Member

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    Yes thanks for the clarification. I too should have seen what the floppy represented.
     
  11. JRViejo

    JRViejo Super Moderator

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    Reality, you're welcome as well. That icon is easy to miss, because... who uses a floppy disk anymore? ;) Take care.
     
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