PC Mag: “…You probably already pay for internet access, but once you’re online, surfing the web doesn’t cost a penny. But as with many things that don’t have a cash price, you pay in other ways. Advertisers and data brokers monetize their knowledge about your online habits and activities. They use data that your browser freely supplies to create a fingerprint that uniquely identifies you. As a result, they know where you go, how you behave, and what you buy. Unlike other tracking techniques, browser fingerprinting leaves no traces and happens without your direct knowledge. How can you protect your privacy and avoid being fingerprinted? Browser Fingerprints vs. Cookies – When you click a link, your browser sends a request for information to a server on the internet. The server responds with the requested information, and the conversation is over. The server doesn’t remember you or your request—that would require a huge database of every visitor ever. And yet, when you’re interacting with a website, you really want some continuity. Early in the evolution of web browsers, cookies were invented to provide that continuity. Each cookie is a simple text file that lives on your computer, not on the site. The site can put information into the cookie, such as your preferred street address, things you’ve bought, or which page you were reading in an online novel. When you revisit that site, it can retrieve data from its own cookie (but not from any other) and read back that information.,,
Taking a long-term view, security and privacy researchers at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, have been running a study on browser fingerprinting since 2016. I’ve participated since the beginning. Participation is simple; once a week, you get an email with a link to check your fingerprint. You can review the stats of your own participation at any time. For example, I now know that I had the same unique and trackable fingerprint for 263 days in 2017. You don’t have to register if you just want to view the aggregate statistics.
