How does using browser extensions help browser fingerprinting?

[emberleaf@lemmy.ml]

never sign in to anything to further avoid getting tracked.

You're going to have to tell me how that's possible on an everyday-use basis. How do you do your banking? How did you access Lemmy?

[emberleaf@lemmy.ml]

Great point.

[blaster_m@lemmy.world]

Don't use your Tor session to sign in. Also banks will probably not let you sign in via Tor.

[refalo@programming.dev]

In the context of fingerprinting I disagree. The vast majority of the world population do NOT use an ad-blocker (supposedly maybe 15% do at most)... so having an adblocker can be used to narrow you down even more IMO. Many extensions can have this issue afaik, especially if it modifies the DOM.

[fubarberry@sopuli.xyz]

Every different part of computer setup/OS/resolution/extension/etc is a data point that can be used to uniquely identify you and track your web browsing. Generally any desktop computer will have a unique fingerprint, the only hardware setup I've heard of being common enough to avoid fingerprinting is something like using safari on a modern iphone.

[refalo@programming.dev]

I don't think it was meant exactly that literally. If you use online banking then of course you have to allow whatever they require for it to work. But for non-necessary services that have an account feature... any time you use those of course will have more of your information out there to sell.

[emberleaf@lemmy.ml]

Trust me, they don't.

[blaster_m@lemmy.world]

However, allowing ads means allowing tracking. You got corelation with the ads being served from ad brokers, who can now see what sites you been on and have a record of where you've been.

[refalo@programming.dev]

Yes but I think you still need a unique fingerprint in order to tie that data to a single person... and there are much less people who use ad-blockers than those who don't, so to me it's an extra bit of identifying information; obviously this puts the privacy-conscious user in a difficult position and I don't know that there's a perfect answer.

[emberleaf@lemmy.ml]

Actually as of 2024, 31.5% of internet users worldwide use an adblocker. Source: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users

[silverlous@hexbear.net]

I think it's about the combination of extensions you have. Not everyone has every popular extension and you may have some less popular ones etc.