What is Browser Fingerprinting, and how is it used to track you?
Your fingerprints serve as a physical representation of your identity and are distinctive. Browser settings have the potential to identify anybody in the online world. The software and hardware setups of the numerous browsers are so different from one another that they can serve as user IDs.
Websites utilize tracking methods to gather information about you, and one of those methods is “browser fingerprinting.” Scripts and instructions in order to tell your browser what to perform browsers need to load a web page.
Detecting numerous details about your computer and browser while operating invisibly in the background, scripts can create your individual online “fingerprint” by combining these details. As a result, your identity can be found over the internet and in various browsing sessions using this fingerprint.
It is more commonplace to use browser fingerprinting. To recognize new and returning users, many websites, even highly ranked websites, use fingerprinting. Search engines like Google and Bing, which are no exception, have employed numerous techniques to pinpoint specific consumers.
Does VPN hide your browser fingerprints?
Since browser fingerprinting gathers and saves private information about you, there is little you can do to prevent it from happening. However, the ability to deceive fingerprinters in a way that increases your online anonymity is unquestionably achievable.
Even when using an OpenVPN, browser fingerprinting makes maintaining your anonymity more difficult. Nevertheless, just because this intrusive surveillance is possible doesn’t imply you should make it simpler for less invasive trackers to follow you. Your online safety and anonymity are predominantly done by encrypting your internet traffic and hiding your IP address.
In that case, a VPN is still the best option for obscuring your IP address. Your internet traffic will be routed through a virtual private network before being sent to the websites you view. In this manner, the IP address of the VPN server is what outside parties see.
Where are browser fingerprints stored?
Cookies are saved on a user’s device, making it simple to block or erase them. Browser fingerprints are especially challenging to control because they are kept remotely. Browser fingerprints must be saved server-side or in a database, as opposed to client-side web cookies, which are kept on the user’s device.
What is the difference between browser fingerprints and cookies?
Fingerprinting and cookies are entirely unrelated. Even tracking your ip address and cookies, which may follow you across the web and are just as capable as digital fingerprinting, may be more recognizable than digital fingerprinting.
Although you can remove your cookies, your browser fingerprint cannot be removed. When you return to a site or visit another that uses fingerprinting on the internet, your fingerprint enables that site to recognize you as the same user. While combined, browser activity data paints a complete picture of your online history, tastes, interests, and even personal situations; it can even be used to identify you when you are not logged in to a website or using private browsing mode.
