Re:Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought (2023)
by dehrmann on Thursday July 24, 2025 @12:17PM
(#44672529)
It depends if they hash the data points or send them unprocessed. If they're unprocessed, they can associate two fingerprints where only the browser has changed.
Re:Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought (2023)
by rinz on Thursday July 24, 2025 @09:39AM
(#44670573)
That is why they probably don't put features that can be easily changed into the final fingerprint hash.
Re:Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought (2023)
by Vinnl on Thursday July 24, 2025 @11:03AM
(#44671569)
But how many features then remain? For example, I've seen people discuss font size, version numbers, viewport size, etc. Do the remaining features still make a unique identifier?
Re:Web fingerprinting is worse than I thought (2023)
by corford on Thursday July 24, 2025 @11:15AM
(#44671723)
In most cases yes. If you upgrade your browser, the only thing that changes is the user agent data. The underlying device remains the same and it is this that leaks a lot of fingerprinting attributes (screen, gfx card, fonts, timezone, language, operating system, battery status, audio setup, bluetooth, installed video codecs, TCP data, IP address if static etc.).
To get a feeling for this, try: https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/ ; https://bot.incolumitas.com/ and https://amiunique.org/fingerprint
Combined with super cookies (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/mozilla-explain...), that's a lot of data points to stitch together a high confidence fingerprint.
Although not perfect, FF is much better out of the box at limiting the leaks than chrome.
> For example, websites can see web browser version, number of CPUs on your device, screen size, number of touchpoints, video/audio codecs, operating system and many other details
If, for example, I upgrade my web browser in two weeks (i.e. I get a new version number), doesn't that mean that the site has lost me?
Sites like https://coveryourtracks.eff.org seem to focus on how unique your fingerprint is, but doesn't it also matter how stable it is over time?