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 19 hours ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Today, yes. In 1996 "doxxing" wasn't a term. The internet was so new to people that nobody knew what it could even do.

I'll give you a great example. I remember watching a news report fall of 2000, where K*B Toys was trying this untested idea. Could they use the internet to sell things? The experts said no, and that the internet was a fad. It simply wasn't a medium you could use for commercial things......ebay aside.

In 1996 Google didn't even exist yet. I don't think Amazon was even a bookstore yet. The internet in those days was primitive, and the wild west of the technology realm.