A lot of the big ad networks right now instead rely heavily on geo-data. Which is why you are probably seeing lots of ads in your feeds that seemingly cross between devices or are relating to interests of your spouse/friends/etc. They just look at the geo on your IP and literally flood the zone.
> They developed a measurement framework called FPTrace, which assesses fingerprinting-based user tracking by analyzing how ad systems respond to changes in browser fingerprints.
I'm curious to know a bit more about their methodology. It's more likely to me that the ad networks are probably segmenting the ads based on device settings more than they are individually targeting based on fingerprints. For example, someone running new software versions on new hardware might be lumped into a hotter buyer category. Also, simple things like time of day have huge impacts on ad bidding, so knowing how they controlled would be everything.
A fingerprint that changes only by the increase of a browser version isn’t dead; it’s stronger.
I've just looked at my fingerprint and I'm told I'm unique (my mum always said that ;-) ).
Unfortunately it's impossible, using https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint, to determine what elements of the fingerprint, if changed, would make me significantly non-unique but when I look down the list 16/58 javascript attributes are red (the lowest category of similarity ratio) and only two of those are overtly dependent on a version number, another six refer to screen size/resolution. It seems to me that leaves quite a lot of information which isn't going to change all the quickly.
While the precise value may change with time I feel like saying "has a half-life of only a few days" tends to understate the effectiveness of this technique.
I don't follow, consider hardware interrupts and their handling delays depending say on the combination of apps installed, the exact gpu driver version, etc ...
An occasional update could change the relevant timings, but would unlikely change all timing distributions (since perhaps the gpu driver wasn't updated, or the some other app wasn't)
How does this work in today's age where ISPs normally will have at least one level of NATing with ipv4. And given ipv6 with prefix delegation is still far away this should continue to be very imprecise?
I don't think that's generally true for home DSL/cable/fiber service. I've only seen it on mobile internet.
Huh? In 2025?? Fingerprinting has been around and actively used to track users for probably at least 20 years.
Fingerprintjs [1] is a well known one that gets a lot of use. And if you check EasyPrivacy, you'll see the rules to block it [2] have been in place for a long time.
[1] https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs [2] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/132813613d04b7228c...
https://www.obsessivefacts.com/images/blog/2020-04-04-the-ja...
> your browser shares a surprising amount of information, like your screen resolution, time zone, device model and more. When combined, these details create a “fingerprint” that’s often unique to your browser. Unlike cookies — which users can delete or block — fingerprinting is much harder to detect or prevent.
Ironically, the more fine tuned and hardened your device, OS, and browser are for security and privacy, the worse your fingerprint liability becomes.
more idle thoughts - it's strange and disappointing that in the vast space and history of FOSS tools, a proper open source browser never took off. I suppose monopolizing from the start was too lucrative to let it be free. Yet there really is little recourse for privacy enthusiasts. I've entertained the idea of using my own scraper, so I can access the web offline, though seems like more trouble than its worth.
What makes you disqualify Firefox from being a "proper open source browser"?
> Between mid-December 2009 and February 2010, Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser (when counting individual browser versions) according to StatCounter, and as of February 2010 was one of the top 3 browser versions according to Net Applications. Both milestones involved passing Internet Explorer 7, which previously held the No. 1 and No. 3 spots in popularity according to StatCounter and Net Applications, respectively - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_3.5
Then Chrome appeared and flattened both IE and Firefox.
1. You could (however, I doubt the effectiveness) use something like brave which tries to randomize your fingerprint.
2. You could "blend in with the crowd" and use tor.
> Prior studies only measured whether fingerprinting-related scripts are being run on the websites but that in itself does not necessarily mean that fingerprinting is being used for the privacy-invasive purpose of online tracking because fingerprinting might be deployed for the defensive purposes of bot/fraud detection and user authentication. [...] a framework to assess fingerprinting-based user tracking by analyzing ad changes from browser fingerprinting adjustments - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3696410.3714548
Unfortunately I don't have access to the paper myself, so not sure what details they share beyond that.
Given how websites are built these days, if you just turn javascript off, half of them, if not more, will become unusable.
I think Privacy Badger may also do it.
There really is no way to combat fingerprinting, other than using Tor on the "safest" mode. <- which disables javascript and some other stuff.
otherwise, you're fingerprintable.
also, check out https://demo.fingerprint.com/playground
halb•3h ago