Cross-Browser Fingerprinting: User Tracking on Steroids
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 4:40 am
A University of Washington study of web tracking behaviors from 1996 to 2016 reveals that 75% of the most popular websites track users. This also includes tracking through browser fingerprinting .
As if that wasn't bad enough, researchers have created a more invasive tracking technique called cross-browser fingerprinting . So if you were switching browsers to escape fingerprinting, this technique has you covered.
While collecting information about devices and software serves purposes such as authentication and personalized services, many metrics are collected solely for browser fingerprinting.
This article explores cross-browser fingerprinting, its risks, and italy number dataset steps you can take to protect yourself against this invasive tracking technique.
What is Cross-Browser Fingerprinting?
Cross-browser fingerprinting is a sophisticated technique used to track users across multiple web browsers on the same device.
Unlike traditional browser fingerprinting, which collects information from a single browser to identify a user, cross-browser fingerprinting goes further, gathering unique identifiers from multiple browsers to create a more comprehensive profile of an individual's online behavior.
The main difference between traditional and cross-browser fingerprinting is scope and accuracy. Traditional fingerprinting is limited to data from a single browser. For example, it can look at browser type, installed extensions, and specific settings like fonts and screen resolution.
This method has limitations because if you switch browsers, your digital fingerprint may look different, giving users some level of privacy and making consistent tracking difficult.
Cross-browser fingerprinting overcomes these limitations by identifying patterns and features unique to your computer, such as hardware configurations, graphics card details, and even how your device handles WebGL tasks.
By combining data from multiple browsers, it creates a more stable and reliable way to identify users, even if they switch browsers frequently.
With cross-browser fingerprinting, researchers are looking to solve several problems. Mainly, it is designed to improve the accuracy of user identification across different platforms, which is crucial for security and authentication processes.
For example, it can enhance multi-factor authentication systems by providing an additional layer of security that verifies a user's identity across different browsers.
However, while it increases security, it also raises significant privacy concerns as it can expose individuals to more invasive tracking and profiling by advertisers or malicious entities.
How Does Cross-Browser Fingerprinting Work?
Cross-browser fingerprinting tracks users across different web browsers by exploiting consistent device and software attributes. This process goes beyond traditional fingerprinting because it focuses not just on one browser, but on multiple browsers used on the same machine.
Technologies and Methods
Let's explore the technologies and methods used in cross-browser fingerprinting, and the specific attributes it relies on.
1. Hardware and Operating System Resources:
This technique takes advantage of unique characteristics of the operating system and hardware, such as graphics cards and CPUs. These attributes are usually consistent across different browsers on the same device and provide a stable basis for fingerprinting.
GPU Details: Attributes such as the GPU model, driver version, and how it renders graphics tasks remain the same regardless of the browser used. Cross-browser fingerprinting derives this information from how the device handles complex graphics tasks.
Operating System: The OS version and its configuration details are usually the same across all browsers on the device.
System Hardware: Attributes such as the number of CPU cores, the presence of certain sensors, and the system's memory capacity are also detected, as these elements do not change with different browsers. This information can be discerned through how a browser handles multi-threaded tasks.
Scripting scripts and installed fonts: The presence of certain scripting scripts and the list of fonts installed on a system can provide a fingerprinting vector. They are less likely to change between browsers on the same device and provide a stable basis for identifying a machine.
Media devices: Information such as how a device's media hardware (microphones, speakers, and cameras) and associated software stack handle sound can also be used for fingerprinting, as access permissions and capabilities typically remain constant across browsers.
Time zone and language: These settings are usually consistent across all browsers on a single device.
By asking browsers to perform tasks that depend on these underlying functionalities, cross-browser fingerprinting can collect detailed information that remains consistent across different browsers.
As if that wasn't bad enough, researchers have created a more invasive tracking technique called cross-browser fingerprinting . So if you were switching browsers to escape fingerprinting, this technique has you covered.
While collecting information about devices and software serves purposes such as authentication and personalized services, many metrics are collected solely for browser fingerprinting.
This article explores cross-browser fingerprinting, its risks, and italy number dataset steps you can take to protect yourself against this invasive tracking technique.
What is Cross-Browser Fingerprinting?
Cross-browser fingerprinting is a sophisticated technique used to track users across multiple web browsers on the same device.
Unlike traditional browser fingerprinting, which collects information from a single browser to identify a user, cross-browser fingerprinting goes further, gathering unique identifiers from multiple browsers to create a more comprehensive profile of an individual's online behavior.
The main difference between traditional and cross-browser fingerprinting is scope and accuracy. Traditional fingerprinting is limited to data from a single browser. For example, it can look at browser type, installed extensions, and specific settings like fonts and screen resolution.
This method has limitations because if you switch browsers, your digital fingerprint may look different, giving users some level of privacy and making consistent tracking difficult.
Cross-browser fingerprinting overcomes these limitations by identifying patterns and features unique to your computer, such as hardware configurations, graphics card details, and even how your device handles WebGL tasks.
By combining data from multiple browsers, it creates a more stable and reliable way to identify users, even if they switch browsers frequently.
With cross-browser fingerprinting, researchers are looking to solve several problems. Mainly, it is designed to improve the accuracy of user identification across different platforms, which is crucial for security and authentication processes.
For example, it can enhance multi-factor authentication systems by providing an additional layer of security that verifies a user's identity across different browsers.
However, while it increases security, it also raises significant privacy concerns as it can expose individuals to more invasive tracking and profiling by advertisers or malicious entities.
How Does Cross-Browser Fingerprinting Work?
Cross-browser fingerprinting tracks users across different web browsers by exploiting consistent device and software attributes. This process goes beyond traditional fingerprinting because it focuses not just on one browser, but on multiple browsers used on the same machine.
Technologies and Methods
Let's explore the technologies and methods used in cross-browser fingerprinting, and the specific attributes it relies on.
1. Hardware and Operating System Resources:
This technique takes advantage of unique characteristics of the operating system and hardware, such as graphics cards and CPUs. These attributes are usually consistent across different browsers on the same device and provide a stable basis for fingerprinting.
GPU Details: Attributes such as the GPU model, driver version, and how it renders graphics tasks remain the same regardless of the browser used. Cross-browser fingerprinting derives this information from how the device handles complex graphics tasks.
Operating System: The OS version and its configuration details are usually the same across all browsers on the device.
System Hardware: Attributes such as the number of CPU cores, the presence of certain sensors, and the system's memory capacity are also detected, as these elements do not change with different browsers. This information can be discerned through how a browser handles multi-threaded tasks.
Scripting scripts and installed fonts: The presence of certain scripting scripts and the list of fonts installed on a system can provide a fingerprinting vector. They are less likely to change between browsers on the same device and provide a stable basis for identifying a machine.
Media devices: Information such as how a device's media hardware (microphones, speakers, and cameras) and associated software stack handle sound can also be used for fingerprinting, as access permissions and capabilities typically remain constant across browsers.
Time zone and language: These settings are usually consistent across all browsers on a single device.
By asking browsers to perform tasks that depend on these underlying functionalities, cross-browser fingerprinting can collect detailed information that remains consistent across different browsers.