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 15 hours ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
65 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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[–] ronigami@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Most vendors are not going to trace you like that. They can, but it’s actually kind of nontrivial and not “easy.”

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

I’m more thinking about government. I gave up on trying to avoid ad tracking forever ago. But if you think a VPN keeps you safe posting “anonymously”, it doesn’t. That’s more what I’m referring to.