Checking Digital Fingerprints for Safer and More Private Browsing

Online privacy has been constantly under attack on a daily basis in our present times. For this very reason, internet users are growing more concerned with how their data is being tracked and used. 

Most people are aware of browsing history and cookies, but hardly anybody knows that they leave behind a unique “digital fingerprint” when surfing the internet.

This digital fingerprint is able to monitor users from website to website, even with private browsing enabled. Thus, in this article, we’ll lay the lowdown on it so that users can understand how it works and have a safer browsing experience.

What Is a Digital Fingerprint?

A digital fingerprint or browser fingerprint is a set of distinguishable points of information that a website collects about a user’s equipment and web browsing behavior. 

Contrary to stored data-based cookies that a user can easily delete, digital fingerprints consist of unique system settings such as the browser type, screen resolution, operating system, installed fonts, time zone, and even hardware settings.

These fingerprints allow third-party trackers and sites to recognize and distinguish between users even when a user deletes cookies or uses incognito mode. The practice is common in advertising, analytics, and fraud detection but has serious privacy concerns.

How Digital Fingerprinting Works

When you go to a website, your browser sends some information to the server automatically. 

That information includes what browser you use, what operating system you have, how large your screen is, and so on. When websites collect these characteristics, they can create an individualized profile of every visitor.

For instance, take two users visiting a website: one from a Windows laptop on Google Chrome with a 1920×1080 screen resolution and another from an iPhone on Safari with a different resolution. Without cookies, it is easy to differentiate these users based on their browser fingerprints.

Fingerprinting methods can even go beyond the browser. Other tracking methods probe behavioral characteristics such as typing speed, mouse travel, and scrolling patterns and build up to a larger fingerprint. This level of accuracy is an effective monitoring method but a big privacy issue as well.

Why Digital Fingerprinting Is a Privacy Issue

Other types of tracking, in contrast to digital fingerprinting, can be easily evaded. Privacy-conscious users deleting cookies on a routine basis or using VPNs still remain accessible with this advanced monitoring technique.

This creates several issues, such as:

• Loss of Control: Digital fingerprints, in contrast to cookies that can be deleted or blocked, are normally permanent and harder to alter.
• Cross-Site Tracking: Trackers and marketers can follow individuals from page to page with digital fingerprints and build extensive user profiles.
• Exploitation of Data: Fingerprinting can be used for targeted advertising, but certain individuals can also use it for phishing, identity theft, and other malicious activities.
• Lack of Transparency: The majority of websites fail to inform users that they are collecting fingerprinting data.

How to Check Your Digital Fingerprint

If there are concerns about being traced through digital fingerprinting, there are a number of online tools that can enable a user to scan how unique their browser fingerprint is. 

For example, by using a TCP IP fingerprint checker or accessing services such as “Am I Unique?” users will be able to determine how identifiable they are online.

These services operate by running scripts that extract data points from your browser and compare them to their database of known fingerprints. The less unique your fingerprint, the more difficult it is for trackers to identify and target you.

How Can I Protect My Digital Fingerprint?

Since there are many different ways you can protect your online privacy, but to eliminate every unique identifier that professionals to make a digital fingerprint is quite challenging. Although it depends upon how you are using the internet, which is also impossible. 

The primary step is to take care is to determine on how you and your devices can currently appear online. There are certain devices that can determine how unique your device is.

The basic security steps like VPN and even blocking the cookies is a good step to make your digital fingerprint are harder to track down, but it’s not enough on their own. 

Strategies for Safer and More Private Browsing

While total evasion of digital fingerprinting is impossible, there are a number of strategies available that users can adopt to minimize exposure. Consider the following approaches to ensure a safer online browsing experience.

1. Use Privacy-Centric Browsers

Browsers such as Brave, Tor, and Mozilla Firefox provide improved privacy settings that limit fingerprinting attacks. 

Tor, for instance, masks users’ information by directing traffic through a sequence of encrypted layers, which makes it difficult for trackers to identify individuals.

2. Turn On Anti-Fingerprinting Features

Most modern browsers also have built-in functionality to stop fingerprinting. Firefox, for instance, has an anti-fingerprinting tool that limits the amount of information websites can collect from a user’s computer. Brave also stops attempts at this type of monitoring by default.

3. Use a VPN or Proxy

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) or a proxy assists in covering your IP address, making it more difficult for websites to locate you. 

These tools assist more in avoiding IP tracking rather than fingerprinting since other areas of information don’t change, but they’re still worth utilizing for extra diversion.

4. Turn Off JavaScript Where Possible

Websites often utilize JavaScript for fingerprinting data collection. JavaScript can be disabled from browser settings or by using add-ons such as NoScript, which restricts data supplied to websites.

5. Use Browser Extensions

Privacy-focused extensions such as Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin can block identified tracking scripts and prevent sites from collecting unnecessary fingerprinting data.

Are Digital Fingerprints Safer?

Digital fingerprinting is a cutting-edge tracking technique that is extremely dangerous to privacy. 

Although cookies are easy to find and clear, fingerprinting is hard to detect and erase, and for this reason, it’s much more coveted by trackers and advertisers. 

But once one knows how fingerprinting works and uses privacy-minded browsing habits, one can take back their online safety and reduce digital trails. 

With the ever-evolving technology, knowledge and diligence are the greatest means towards more secure and private browsing.