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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[–] CluckN@lemmy.world 26 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Pfft amateur, I break into my local Applbee’s after 2AM and use their POS terminal browser to look at used cars.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 20 points 9 hours ago

Applebee's at 2AM which leaves a physical trail? Noob. I strap meshtastic nodes on wild dogs, using them as a Internet relay at 1-2kb a second, to look at manga leaks.