Company
Date Published
Author
Sergey Mostsevenko
Word count
3073
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Browser fingerprinting is a method to identify web browsers without relying on cookies by using browser attributes to create a unique, stateless identifier that works even in incognito mode. A specific technique, audio fingerprinting, utilizes the Web Audio API to generate a stable identifier by mathematically processing audio signals, an approach that can vary across different browsers due to variations in their underlying code and hardware dependencies. While audio fingerprinting alone offers limited uniqueness, it is highly stable and contributes to the accuracy of browser identification when combined with other signals in comprehensive fingerprinting libraries like FingerprintJS. Browsers like Brave have introduced privacy measures to mitigate the effectiveness of such fingerprinting techniques by introducing randomness into audio signal processing. Despite these privacy features, audio fingerprinting remains a useful tool in anti-fraud efforts by helping to identify and differentiate devices, especially when traditional tracking methods are circumvented.