this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Amidst the glossy marketing for VPN services, it can be tempting to believe that the moment you flick on the VPN connection you can browse the internet with full privacy. Unfortunately this is quite far from the truth, as interacting with internet services like websites leaves a significant fingerprint. In a study by [RTINGS.com] this browser fingerprinting was investigated in detail, showing just how easy it is to uniquely identify a visitor across the 83 laptops used in the study.

As summarized in the related video (also embedded below), the start of the study involved the Am I Unique? website which provides you with an overview of your browser fingerprint. With over 4.5 million fingerprints in their database as of writing, even using Edge on Windows 10 marks you as unique, which is telling.

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[–] Amoxtli@thelemmy.club 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is why you use a separate browser for different activities and don't cross contaminate.

[–] KneeTitts@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

And your second browser should be Tor

[–] afox@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Good luck I'm behind 7 proxies

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I’m here with multi-hop VPN with the first two hops staying in-country and the rest all random + a shit load of DNS blocking lists and browser extensions + blocking Google. I use different VPN providers too. I’m also introducing variable delays to my traffic to make NetFilter data less helpful.

[–] hietsu@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Hops don’t matter at all against fingerprinting, which includes things like fonts you have installed, the os, os version number, browser version, extensions, some browser settings/flags, timezone, keyboard layout, your screen resolution, dpi, and what ever the crap the ”canvas” has stored. So pretty much no matter what you do, you’re unique.

You can use some browsers that resist fingerprinting but guess what, those are so rarely used that again you shine like a beacon. I’m still yet to find an browser extension that would fake all my fingerprint parameters by setting them as what is the most common one in each category. So a Windows user running latest Chrome full screen on Fullhd monitor.

And there is nothing stopping websites running the fingerprinting services and scripts on their own server, albeit most rely on third parties for convenience, and these at least can be blocked.

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 1 points 1 day ago

Right, that’s why I mentioned all the blocking at the DNS and browser extension level — most fingerprinting is being done by third-parties — I generally don’t see first parties fingerprinting but if they do it’s likely a website I chose to be on rather than some shady <script> from God knows where.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Some privacy browsers will randomize your fingerprint

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[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Please understand that browser extensions make you more easy to track. I used to be under the same assumption, but uBO is as far as you should go. fingerprints include your extensions.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That depends on whether your browser exposes them, and if/how they affect your fingerprint. If you go to deviceinfo.me it will show you what your browser is exposing.

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My thinking is that most of the fingerprinting is happening by third parties, and where it’s the website operators themselves I’m not super concerned about being fingerprinted.

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Pfft, I have 12 firewalls, good luck decrypting these. 🤓

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 day ago

I'll just get 3 hackers to my keyboard, just wait.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

What a pointless article.

[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Until someone invents real-life Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics from the cyberpunk genre, where doing shit you dont like leads them to have their equipment destroyed with electricity surge, nothing you do online is private nor is there any consequences from them enumerating everything about you to sell or use maliciously.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Does anonymous mode browsing+VPN improve this? I would think it would

[–] dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Part of the reason Tor is good is because it generates the same fingerprint for all users (part of the reason you shouldn’t install additional extensions on it, by the way). Mullvad browser tries to do this but without the Tor network.

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[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You can't hide or get rid of the browser fingerprint, but some addons can help to randomize it so it looks like you're using a different device every time you visit a site.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Personally, I don’t care if a site can fingerprint me. As long as they can’t tie that fingerprint to a rich data set.

So I make sure that each domain gets a different fingerprint response. That means that a site can validate that I’m still the same user, but any XSS attempting fingerprint based data exchange just gets garbage.

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

And how do you go about that? Do you adjust your window size and extensions on a site-by-site basis?

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 2 points 1 day ago

Is Firefox's claimed Anti fingerprinting technology any good?

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Some, but only if you're using a very common device (i.e. Dell Latitude) with Windows. Browser fingerprinting gives up hardware specs, so hiding by blending in only works when your hardware is hard to pin down.

Use a browser that hides hardware specs, like Mullvad or Libreworlf. Even Brave is ok.

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