Tech

How Web Fingerprinting Tracks You

Many websites use web fingerprinting to track you across the web. When you visit a website, fingerprinting scripts run in the background, collecting attributes about your device (screen size and resolution, operating system version, installed fonts, browser settings and plugins, audio and video capabilities) to create a digital “hash” that represents your unique profile online. A fingerprint can be used to identify you and your behavior on a site, which helps to prevent phishing attempts. A website can also require additional verification, like email or two-factor authentication, when a suspected phishing fingerprint tries to log in.

The Evolution of Web Fingerprinting in Cybersecurity

Fingerprinting has emerged as a more powerful tracking technique than cookies. It can be used to identify a device even after the user clears browser history or installs new software, and it’s also more difficult to avoid than cookie-based tracking. Many users assume that the ubiquitous cookie banners, which ask them to agree to be tracked, offer a choice to opt out of fingerprinting, but these often don’t work.

While there are ways to reduce fingerprinting, including using anti-tracking browser extensions and ad blockers, these measures introduce friction into your web experience and may not be effective against long-term tracking. Alternatively, you can choose to limit the personal information shared with sites by only signing in with known devices and restricting tracking through browser settings or the noscript> tag.

Privacy advocates warn that fingerprinting can be combined with other data sets to reveal personal information. It could be linked to your social media profiles, for example, or the information murky data brokers hold about you. Moreover, it can bypass regulations such as GDPR or Vermont’s data broker law that attempt to regulate tracking and data collection.

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