Browser Fingerprint
What your browser reveals without any cookies
What is browser fingerprinting?
Browser fingerprinting is a technique websites use to identify and track visitors without cookies. By combining dozens of signals — your User Agent, screen resolution, GPU, installed fonts, timezone, and more — a site can generate a hash that uniquely identifies your browser. Unlike cookies, you cannot delete a fingerprint. It persists even in private browsing mode and across different websites.
How unique is your fingerprint?
Research by the EFF (Panopticlick project) found that over 83% of browsers have a fingerprint unique enough to track. The combination of User Agent, screen resolution, and timezone alone narrows the field dramatically. Adding WebGL renderer, canvas hash, and hardware concurrency makes most fingerprints globally unique — even without a single cookie.
Can you prevent fingerprinting?
Completely preventing fingerprinting is difficult. The Tor Browser is the strongest option — it normalises all fingerprint signals so every Tor user looks identical. The Brave browser blocks some fingerprinting scripts and randomises canvas/WebGL values. Standard VPNs do not help with fingerprinting at all — they only hide your IP. Private browsing mode also does not help, as fingerprint signals come from the browser itself, not stored data.
Fingerprinting vs. cookies
Cookies are explicit identifiers stored on your device — you can delete them and opt out. Fingerprinting is passive: no data is stored on your device, so you cannot delete it. It is harder to detect and does not require consent under most current privacy laws. Many ad networks use both: cookies for consistent identification when available, fingerprinting as a fallback when cookies are blocked.