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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[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 27 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I'm not looking to be anonymous, I want access to Stargate Atlantis that Amazon Prime is geo blocking from me.

For that, VPN works as advertised.

[–] jungle@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago

Yep. That's how I watch F1 too.

[–] iamdefinitelyoverthirteen@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Why go through the trouble? fmhy.net

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I hope you're not raw dogging torrenting Linux ISOs with some form of protection.

[–] iamdefinitelyoverthirteen@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I haven't raw dogged the internet in at least 15 years. I meant more along the lines of giving Amazon money.