Researchers Figure Out How to Beat Indestructible Cookie

Persistent data tracking has a new tool and new methods have arisen to overcome it. iPhone owners aren't so fortunate, though

By Joshua Stein, PC World | Security, data mining, Evercookie Add a new comment

October 27, 2010, 2:44 PM — Evercookie is a JavaScript tool for data miners, was updated recently. Evercookie is a tracking cookie technology of sorts, but it's made using JavaScript, and it doesn't go away when you delete your browser's cookies.

While you shouldn't be shocked that marketers are tracking your Web browsing habits, it's always been fairly easy to remove cookies and to clear your browsing history. But Evercookie circumvents this. Dominic White, a South African white hat hacker has analyzed evercookie's staying power on the iPhone. His analysis shows that there is not currently a technique to remove evercookie from an iPhone unless you jailbreak it.

Be aware that you may have quite a hard time keeping your browsing history to yourself in the immediate future as Evercookie remains in development. Download and install the latest updates for your browser as more hype on the issue will ideally lead to browser fixes to eliminate it.

Thankfully, researchers have already found ways to remove Evercookie from your PC's browser. For Google Chrome, Jeremiah Grossman, CTO for WhiteHat Security released a guide for removing Evercookie that doesn't require a restart.

If you use Firefox, check out, Monirul Islam's instructional video for removing Evercookie.

View the discussion thread.

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