[user17843]

Where is your evidence?

Did you even read my comment? The typical pihole lists already include tracking domains.

What you imply is that if I visit youtube.com with tracking disabled, they still create a profile of me. Then tell me, what unique identifier do they use?

[dmitriid]

Browser fingerprint, referrers, available cookies, IP address immediately come to mind.

[user17843]

OK, but how do you account for changing IP-Addresses? You would need to take one identifier that never changes.

Maybe they have machine learning which combines a couple of factors and then create long-term profiles based on the likelihood of some data belonging to the same person.

That would be illegal though.

[dmitriid]

That’s what shadow profiles are: they are not necessarily illegal (depends on jurisdiction, illegal under GDPR), they act on probabilities (this particular set of data identifies a person and is significantly different from/similar to other sets of data), they look for patterns in data and behaviour (a user with browser fingerprint A from Pasadena that looks at youtube videos of category X yesterday and today is likely to be the same person even if IP changes)