4 ms·
>Most browser "fingerprinting" methods have a pretty short half-life. The last assessment I read said something like half of the fingerprints were lost within 2
by msm_ 3y ago
>Most browser "fingerprinting" methods have a pretty short half-life. The last assessment I read said something like half of the fingerprints were lost within 24 hours.
That's absolutely not my experience. Maybe if you use some weird research-level fingerprinting technique, but most fingerprints are just regular old boring stuff - screen and browser viewport size, installed plugins and fonts, browser UA and settings, hardware/gpu quirks, etc[1]. And it doesn't have to be 100% reliable, just reliable enough to track your activity to show you some ads.
[1] as a privacy conscious individual I'm fully aware just viewport size is enough to almost uniquely fingerprint me. I use my laptop screen, with sidebery extension, browser tab bar hidden by user css and sway in tabbed mode. My second computer is less unique, I "just" use sway and firefox with the minimal tab size (that for some reason is hidden must be unlocked in the about:config so it's very rarely used).
- legitster 3y agoThe problem is, if you are running a marketing database of millions and and millions of distinct IDs, you have to get into very esoteric fingerprint factors. Anytime you have a driver update or switch devices, you lose the connection in the data. https://medium.com/slido-dev-blog/we-collected-500-000-browser-fingerprints-here-is-what-we-found-82c319464dc9 https://medium.com/slido-dev-blog/we-collected-500-000-brows... Can it track you for a bit and show you some ads? A little bit. But compared to a tracking pixel it is not even remotely as reliable.
- bonton89 3y agoDoesn't the firefox resistfingerprinting setting fuzz most of these things? I see a lot of misconceptions about it on here when people use amiunique. It will say you are unique but if you look for a historical match there aren't any because you are unique, but also different each time you show up.
- legitster 3y agoThis gets lost a lot - just because you can prove uniqueness doesn't mean it's persistent or repeatable. Some of the "uniqueness" factors include things like number of audio devices or battery life.