Browser fingerprinting leverages signals from a device’s software and hardware to create a unique visitor profile that can identify the same user across multiple sites. These profiles provide websites with valuable information about the visitors they serve, such as their demographics and browsing histories, or their risk of fraud.

While browser fingerprinting can help fight fraud, it can also compromise user privacy. browser fingerprint API a website can correlate a browser fingerprint with a piece of personally identifiable information, such as an email address, a recognized given and sur-name or even a government-issued identifier, the person may be tracked or targeted by an adversary. The consequences of this could vary by user and use case, but include the potential for phishing attacks and threats to physical safety.

How Browser Fingerprint APIs Enhance Online Security and User Profiling

The fingerprints gathered by browsers can contain data points such as the operating system, installed plugins, screen resolution and color depth, and hardware details like the kind of graphics card installed. They can be used to track a visitor across the Web, irrespective of whether they’ve cleared their cookies or accessed a website in private or incognito mode.

Browser fingerprinting is a growing security concern for users and developers. Several APIs are prone to fingerprinting, including HTML5’s canvas and audio, WebGL’s rendering capabilities, CSS’ font style detection and bounding boxes, and GPU rendering. Moreover, the fingerprints generated by these APIs are often persistent across different browsing sessions, which can make them very useful for tracking and profiling users. This has led to concerns from privacy advocates, such as those from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who have pushed for the introduction of stricter browser fingerprinting controls. CreepJS, a new security tool by Google’s Chrome team, helps mitigate the impact of these vulnerabilities by testing Web APIs for their sensitivity to fingerprinting.