The problem of anonymity on the network
Despite growing awareness of Internet privacy issues, many
This is how everyone leaves us online digitallya fingerprint that consists of tiny pieces of personal data. This unique identifier is now owned by countless legal entities.
Understanding how certain methods worktracking should not be the exclusive domain of those seeking to benefit from your online activity. In this case, we'll be shedding light on a widely used but rarely discussed tracking method: browser fingerprinting.
What is a fingerprint or computer (browser) fingerprint?
Originally designed for security purposes,Fingerprint is a tracking method that identifies individual users based on their browser and device settings. To display websites correctly, your browser provides access to certain information about your device, including screen resolution, operating system, location, and language settings. These details are essentially the details of your digital fingerprint.
Like detectives collecting evidence from a scenecrimes, trackers can aggregate this data into a recognizable “fingerprint” and then use this identifier to track online activity. It may seem impractical to extract a unique fingerprint from a pool of innocuous settings and data, but given the number of browsers and configurations available to a given user, there are many possible combinations.
Also, after assembly, the digital fingerprintyour finger will be consistently accurate. Thanks to recent developments in the field of cross-browser fingerprinting, this method can successfully identify users in 99% of cases. This means that even if you've taken a few recommended precautions (masking your IP address over VPN and deleting or blocking cookies), trackers can still use your digital fingerprint to re-identify and re-create your device's cookies when you visit a site. ...
Why is it used and by whom?
Increased public concern aboutInternet privacy has made safeguards more accessible and easier for users, making traditional cookie-based tracking relatively unacceptable. This decline in cookie performance has prompted trackers to look for more advanced ways to monitor users. Many of the companies that pioneered browser fingerprinting saw this as a commercial opportunity and quickly expanded their services in the online tracking world.
Browser fingerprints are just one of manyother tracking methods used by companies. They use fingerprint to discreetly track online activity, collecting small pieces of data about you along the way.
Although trackers do not necessarily match youractivity by person or name, the data they receive from visited sites, social networks, searches, content can be considered personally identifiable. This data creates an overall profile of your personality (age range, location, language, interests, etc.). The information is later sold to advertisers and marketers, who use it to continuously provide personalized advertising and recommendations.
How do I know what data is being collected for a fingerprint?
There are several tools for protection, e.g.Apple's recently released Safari 14 browser update will tell you what trackers are on the website you visit. But with Safari, you first need to visit the site for the first time and analyze the list of its trackers.
There is also a Blacklight tool that servesmore like an information tool. You can go to the site and enter the website address you are interested in in the prompt. Blacklight then crawls the site and tells you how many trackers there are, what they are doing, and to whom they are potentially sending your data. You may recognize some of these names, such as Oracle and Verizon. Others that you may not like, such as LiveRamp or Criteo. It's safe to say that they all know a lot about you.
Blacklight test results of eachthe requested domain is cached for 24 hours; such cached reports are returned in response to subsequent requests from users of the same website made within those 24 hours. This is to prevent malicious use of the tool by attempting to overload the website with thousands of automated visits.
Blacklight also informs userswhether their results were higher, lower, or roughly equal to those of the top 100,000 websites in the Tranco List. More on this below.
The Blacklight codebase is open source and available on Github; it can also be downloaded as an NPM module.
What other data is tracked?
Third party cookies
A cookie is a small piece of datasent by the web server and stored on the user's computer. A web client (usually a web browser) sends this piece of data to the web server as part of an HTTP request whenever it tries to open a page on the corresponding site. It is used to save data on the user's side, in practice it is usually used for:
- user authentication;
- storing personal preferences and user settings;
- tracking the state of the user's access session;
- information about statistics about users.
Browser support for cookies (accepting, storing andsubsequent transfer of saved cookies to the server) is required by many sites with access restrictions, most online stores. The customization of the appearance and behavior of many websites for individual user preferences is also based on cookies.
Cookie can be easily intercepted and changed (for example,to gain access to the account) if the user uses an unencrypted connection to the server. At risk are users who access the Internet using public Wi-Fi access points and do not use mechanisms such as SSL and TLS. Encryption can also solve other problems related to the security of transmitted data.
Third-party domain cookies are used by hundreds of companies to collect profiles of users and serve tailored advertisements based on their behavior.
Popular browsers - Edge, Brave, Firefox, and Safari - block third-party domain tracking cookies by default, and the Chrome developers have announced they will reject them.
Session recording
Session recording isa technology that allows third parties to track and record all user behavior on a web page, including mouse movements, clicks, page scrolling, and all form input without even pressing the submit button.
In a 2017 study, researchersPrinceton University discovered that session recording programs collect important information such as passwords and credit card numbers. When the researchers contacted the relevant companies, most of them responded quickly and eliminated the cause of the data breaches. However, the study emphasizes that these are not just bugs, but rather unsafe practices that, according to the researchers, should be completely stopped. Most of the companies that provide the session recording feature report that they use the data to give their customers (the websites that install the technology) useful information about how to improve the user experience of the website.
Advertising trackers
Advertising trackers (Ad trackers) are technologies,identifying and collecting information about users. Such technologies are usually (but not always) used to some extent with the consent of the website owners. They are used to collect analytics about website users, for targeting advertisements, and data brokers and other data collectors to create their user profiles. They usually take the form of Javascript scripts.
Pixel Facebook
A Facebook Pixel is one created by Facebook.software code that allows other websites to target their visitors with Facebook ads. Some of the most common actions tracked by the pixel are viewing a page or specific content, adding payment information, or making a purchase.
"Remarketing Audiences" Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most popular todaywebsite analytics platform. According to whotracks.me, 41.7% of web traffic is analyzed by Google Analytics. While much of this service's functionality is to provide developers and website owners with information about how a site's audience interacts with it, the tool also allows a website to create its own audience lists based on user behavior and then target ads to those visitors based on user behavior. Internet using Google Ads and Display & Video 360. Blacklight examines the sites it examines for the presence of this tool, but not how to use it.
What can be done?
There are relatively simple ways to minimize the information that websites can get about you, and they don't require much technical knowledge:
- If possible, turn off ad personalization. You can do this for example on Facebook, Google and Twitter.
- Use a browser that cares more aboutconfidentiality. You should specifically look for a browser that rejects third-party cookies, which are often used to track you online. Safari and Firefox browsers block third-party cookies by default, and both have "privacy report" features that list everything they've blocked for you; you can find them by clicking on the small shield icon to the left of the browser bar. Google Chrome has a setting that will allow you to block third-party cookies, and the company says it will completely block third-party cookies by 2022.
- Add extensions to your browser that blocktracker. Privacy Badger, Ghostery, and Privacy Essentials DuckDuckGo are three good examples. They will tell you how many trackers they have blocked and what they are. Ad blockers such as uBlock Origin, AdBlock and AdBlock Plus will do the trick too. These extensions can compromise the functionality of some websites, and keep in mind that you are blocking ads, which many of them rely on to generate income.
This is just the beginning and there is no reliableways to prevent any tracking on the internet. Again, some of these trackers will help you use the site you are on; others will help pay for its existence. For example, viewing ads provides the editorial office with a salary. The best thing you can do is to raise your awareness of what data is being recorded and who else can see it.
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