Fingerprints left by wget

Ulysses_ · 04-04-2015, 09:46 AM

What are some of the fingerprints left when you download a web page with wget or post a comment with wget?

estabroo · 04-04-2015, 10:21 AM

The user-agent string would definitely be one.

273 · 04-04-2015, 10:26 AM

Your IP address will be recorded also together with what wget reqested .

John VV · 04-04-2015, 02:14 PM

Quote:

What are some of the fingerprints left when you download a web page with wget or post a comment with wget?

sounds a bit like homework ?

Ulysses_ · 04-04-2015, 04:28 PM

It's not. Just want to know if using wget instead of a browser might be a decent defence against fingerprint tracking. Pages would then be viewed offline with a browser.

273 · 04-04-2015, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ulysses_

It's not. Just want to know if using wget instead of a browser might be a decent defence against fingerprint tracking. Pages would then be viewed offline with a browser.

Don't bother -- your IP address is unique enough for the short term and your use of wget will be enough in the long term. If you access data on another machine the owner of that machine will know a lot about your computer and there's not much you can do to stop that.

veerain · 04-04-2015, 11:08 PM

You can reduce tracking but not completely.

Use TOR instead for anonymising.

Sefyir · 04-04-2015, 11:23 PM

You can also use a vpn to camouflage your ip address.
Run this command to see what your ip address is.

Code:

curl myexternalip.com/raw

Ulysses_ · 04-05-2015, 04:11 AM

Maybe a script could be written that changes the user agent in every session. If we know all the fingerprints wget leaves, we can probably deal with each one appropriately, eg with TOR etc. But we cannot do this with a full featured browser, unless it is crippled to do no more than wget.

veerain · 04-05-2015, 04:28 AM

You can change user-agent in every invocation of wget. Using curl would be better.

I read someone using curl to view webpages together with lynx web browser.

Ulysses_ · 04-05-2015, 06:17 AM

Probably better to change it once per session, not per invocation, so it looks like thousands of others using a browser with scripts disabled.

ntubski · 04-05-2015, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veerain

You can change user-agent in every invocation of wget. Using curl would be better.

What's the advantage of curl over wget in this context?

veerain · 04-05-2015, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ntubski

What's the advantage of curl over wget in this context?

It has better http support plus many other featues. And it's a library/program to specifically do these kind of things.

ntubski · 04-05-2015, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by veerain

It has better http support plus many other featues. And it's a library/program to specifically do these kind of things.

I was hoping you might a bit more specific. Looking at curl vs wget comparison (written by the curl author), it seems that wget's recursive download feature might tip the balance in its favour for this case (since you usually want to look at many pages on a site).