A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.
That’s the magic of fingerprinting. They don’t need what we would consider are the “real” signals like IP address anymore.
They can create a composite value based on boring stuff like the things you mentioned, plus a few others. They can pull fun stuff like the details of your TLS handshake OS, browser, versions of various plugins/addons, etc. Given 20+ signals they can fingerprint you pretty well. They store it and just profile you, follow you around.
VPNs, privacy addons are just more signals to use to fingerprint you. You stand out even more when you try to hide. It’s been this way for a while now.
I don’t understand why this should be inherently impossible. If you buy a separate device, and use that exclusively for one thing and do not cross-contaminate, that should work to avoid fingerprinting right? And this is all information that your computer is voluntarily providing, and is I assume possible to change independently from the hardware. So why not?
The way and what you type, how you move your mouse, when you browse…
Think we can make things more difficult, but just assume tracked everywhere. Won’t know about browser privacy 0days either for who knows how long.
Some stuff has to be reported accurately for stuff to work well, like screen size. Other stuff can be and is faked, even by Apple out of the box I’m pretty sure.
CDNs serve different sizes accordingly I thought? Sometimes. Deliver pages faster without noticeable image compression. Don’t some large sites do this all the time? Based on viewport size
That’s the magic of fingerprinting. They don’t need what we would consider are the “real” signals like IP address anymore.
They can create a composite value based on boring stuff like the things you mentioned, plus a few others. They can pull fun stuff like the details of your TLS handshake OS, browser, versions of various plugins/addons, etc. Given 20+ signals they can fingerprint you pretty well. They store it and just profile you, follow you around.
VPNs, privacy addons are just more signals to use to fingerprint you. You stand out even more when you try to hide. It’s been this way for a while now.
Is there any way to browse the web without being fingerprinted, short of literally using a separate computer
Really?
No.
It’s been this way for a while. At best, you can use some techniques to provide plausible deniability from a legal perspective.
Not that laws matter anymore.
The best you can do is try to blend in.
I don’t understand why this should be inherently impossible. If you buy a separate device, and use that exclusively for one thing and do not cross-contaminate, that should work to avoid fingerprinting right? And this is all information that your computer is voluntarily providing, and is I assume possible to change independently from the hardware. So why not?
The way and what you type, how you move your mouse, when you browse…
Think we can make things more difficult, but just assume tracked everywhere. Won’t know about browser privacy 0days either for who knows how long.
Some stuff has to be reported accurately for stuff to work well, like screen size. Other stuff can be and is faked, even by Apple out of the box I’m pretty sure.
Not my area of expertise :)
Ah yes, CSS, the famously serverside technology
CDNs serve different sizes accordingly I thought? Sometimes. Deliver pages faster without noticeable image compression. Don’t some large sites do this all the time? Based on viewport size