If with the same smartphone device I surf to one website (each time with a different IP, different SIM card and no saved cookies or cache), is it possile to detect that I'm using the same device? If so, how exactly?
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user agent string– schroeder ♦Sep 3, 2015 at 22:53
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@schroeder How can I bypass the browser's user agent string?– Sahar AvrSep 3, 2015 at 22:56
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on a computer, there are utilities that will re-write it for you - you will have to look to see what's available on the mobile device that you are using.– schroeder ♦Sep 3, 2015 at 23:01
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I will just develop a new webrowser myself then, thank you.– Sahar AvrSep 3, 2015 at 23:07
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Note that there are "browser fingerprinting" issues you will have to address in your custom browser. Should be easy to fiddle with, though.– schroeder ♦Sep 3, 2015 at 23:08
2 Answers
No, it is impossible for a website to detect the nature of your device through your IP address. There is no information within the IP address that indicates the nature of the device. The physical part in the IP address is just an address of the machine.
To detect your device, a website must implement other techniques such as OS fingerprinting and device fingerprinting.
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1Exactly. FYI: here's a recent flaw in the HTML5 Battery Status API that allows websites to fingerprint a device: eprint.iacr.org/2015/616.pdf Sep 4, 2015 at 8:20
Yes, they can uniquely identify you, most of the time, based on the headers that your browser sends.
See https://panopticlick.eff.org/
There is also http://samy.pl/evercookie/ which can set non-regular cookies, which are very hard to delete.