this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Browser Fingerprinting And Why VPNs Won’t Make You Anonymous (hackaday.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours 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.

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 4 points 16 hours ago

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.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 3 points 11 hours ago

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.