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by userforcomment 1057 days ago
Try visiting this from incognito and clearing cache/cookies: https://fingerprint.com. This can't be legal, right?
4 comments

Sounds like it should be illegal. That said, changing my User Agent to IE+Win7 changed the identifier for me. Looks like Firefox's "resist fingerprinting" setting also works. I wish there was a separare setting for private browsing.

That said, that was enlightening, thank you for pointing this out. It's disgusting that there are companies selling this.

This is the "workaround" now that websites aren't given free range access to your cookie jar. They make a unique identifier out of a range of info like OS, browser, screen size, whatever seemingly harmless info they can get.
Fonts you have installed, what certs or APIs you have enabled in your browser, someone else can continue with their favorites..
https://amiunique.org/fingerprint gives some insight into what is used for fingerprinting, if you want to randomize your profile.

This one overestimates uniqueness because it doesn't consider stability (e.g. it uses your current battery charge level as a uniqueness measure, which is obviously not stable minute-to-minute let alone day-to-day).

> Permanent identifier

Consistent visitor ID over months or years, even as browsers are upgraded.

This advertisement implies some things that could potentially be illegal, but I don't think that practice is by itself. Stalking as a service really gives Saas a new meaning .