Ads mostly suck, that is why people have blockers and why those are so successful.
If I do not want to get tracked or targeted by ads, I have to jump through many hoops that are not manageable by average users. This is why I plainly hate this industry.
I don't really care about your models, while they might provide interesting data, I do not want to be part of it.
Oh, and the ad industry is currently in the process of sanitizing the larger platforms, because you do not want to be associated with losers. It is the great ad industry we are talking about. I don't like them because of that too.
These are the larger issues that prevent useful discussion about specific tracking mechanisms.
The main thing I see fingerprinting used for is tracking users between mobile apps and websites. That mainly relies on IP addresses.
The best way to track users is just to ask for information. Ask for a users email address to log in and you have a simple means to track a user across devices.
I think I missed something, what do you mean by this? Are there some data leaking privacy concerns with HTML canvas elements?
I think the tone of most of the conversations around Canvas I've seen are a bit more catastrophic. Their argument usually goes something like: "Most websites are making UUIDs of your Canvas profile and tracking you everywhere, and therefore your cookie blocking and VPN are useless!" Bear in mind, I don't mean to strawman here, that's just a version of the argument I see most often.
What I personally suspect is that Canvas fingerprinting is used to supplement other tracking or verification. For example, I have a valid amazon account, an Amazon cookie is properly set, and Amazon also checks my Canvas information to make sure nothing looks too out place. ie, my cookie was probably not replayed since my Canvas, IP address, and credentials check out. Presumably, my Canvas information cannot generate a true UUID, but it is something like 1 in 10,000. Enough to use it for additional verification.
Now, is any of this correct? Are folks' most paranoid fears accurate? Is my belief that Canvas is supplementary fraud detection accurate? Whatever answer is correct, it's unlikely to be broadly uniform across all websites. But, the point is, I'd really like to hear from an engineer about how Canvas is used.
I appreciate that we know in general what the answers to some of these questions might be, but I'd really like if more of these articles got into specifics.