Uncovering the Insidious Practice of Digital Fingerprinting for Online Tracking
Digital fingerprinting is a complex method of tracking users on the internet that can get past even blocked cookies or an IP address masked with a VPN. It is a wide and varied set of information variables collected from devices as users use the internet. A digital fingerprint can pinpoint specific users by combining a huge variety of data types, including the type of web browser, operating system, browser extensions, installed programs or apps, language, and even specific fonts. While it is difficult to completely stop sites and advertisers from tracking users with digital fingerprints, using privacy-focused browsers like Tor, Brave, Mullvad, and DuckDuckGo can help limit the amount of data accessible for fingerprinting.