Is it possible and cost-covering to create an ad-sponsored service that discloses what ad networks collect about users - i.e. age, location, preferences, interests, pregnancy, illnesses etc?
Because let’s be honest - all of us know that a lot of data points are being collected about us, countless articles have been written about the insanity of cookie and user-data monetization networks - still it appears to be a privilege to few to tap into that data trove.
I personally haven’t seen an effort to try and make this transparent. Efforts like this page are commendable and informative, much like amiunique or other services - still they lack the tangible information that sharing this information with “the world” reveals about an affected individual.
Why hasn’t this been done yet? Why is this seemingly not trivial?
I’ve been experimenting with ways to reduce my browser fingerprint and exploring techniques to anonymize fingerprint data.
So I built this.
This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS but entirely client side. I don’t maintain massive lists of time zones or do server-side comparisons to calculate uniqueness. Instead, it automatically surfaces everything a browser exposes, explaining each item in detail.
Hi, thank you for going through the trouble of putting this together. This sort of service is invaluable as it allows us clueless people to be mindful about something that negatively impacts our life.
Here's a suggestion: it's important to show us that our browser footprint allows us to be positively identified and tracked, but it only alerts us to a problem. It would be very useful if the site also provided some tips to improve anonymity, particularly if it's low-effort changes such as tweaking a couple of config changes.
What we need is VPB. Virtual Private Browser like VPNs. Essentially standardised cloud browsers that can execute your requests and send you back the result as bitmap buffers.
Great idea! How to make sure that the users data stays private without the cloud knowing where the user is surfing. And I wonder how to monetise it? Subscription?
I would love to be able to toggle an attribute off/on to see what affect each has on the uniqueness of my fingerprint. My guess is that there are a handful of _very_ unique things, that if obscured, would make one less recognisable.
I get a new fingerprint id everytime I refresh the page (firefox, linux) -- so that might be sampling a tiny bit too much.
audio and canvas fingerprint are constant though so it's probably plenty enough...
Yet on the flip side, if I’m trying to auto identify my own phone for a login-less private app i tried to build I couldn’t get to reliably generate a consistent fingerprint on safari private mode, it regenerates 50% of the time, I’ve tried several libraries like fingerprintjs and co..
But to what extent should we care for such a small website? The AI witch hunt won't get us too far, and this new way of producing is only getting started. The loss of control to a non-deterministic black box is worrysome, but at some point non-vibe coded (hard coded? brain coded?) software might become less error-prone that vibe-coded
this seems incredibly variable as to be almost useless as any type of "fingerprint" - running the latest version of Chrome on Android, the ID at the top of the page changes each reload.
This is useless. I think you misunderstand the point of fingerprinting. A powerful fingerprinting algo should strive to detect you as the same person (aprox) while you use two different browsers. A more powerful one will detect you while you use another device. This only detect your current refresh.
Is it possible and cost-covering to create an ad-sponsored service that discloses what ad networks collect about users - i.e. age, location, preferences, interests, pregnancy, illnesses etc?
Because let’s be honest - all of us know that a lot of data points are being collected about us, countless articles have been written about the insanity of cookie and user-data monetization networks - still it appears to be a privilege to few to tap into that data trove.
I personally haven’t seen an effort to try and make this transparent. Efforts like this page are commendable and informative, much like amiunique or other services - still they lack the tangible information that sharing this information with “the world” reveals about an affected individual.
Why hasn’t this been done yet? Why is this seemingly not trivial?
Hi HN,
I’ve been experimenting with ways to reduce my browser fingerprint and exploring techniques to anonymize fingerprint data.
So I built this.
This is kind of like a lighter, more thorough version of CreepJS but entirely client side. I don’t maintain massive lists of time zones or do server-side comparisons to calculate uniqueness. Instead, it automatically surfaces everything a browser exposes, explaining each item in detail.
Hi, thank you for going through the trouble of putting this together. This sort of service is invaluable as it allows us clueless people to be mindful about something that negatively impacts our life.
Here's a suggestion: it's important to show us that our browser footprint allows us to be positively identified and tracked, but it only alerts us to a problem. It would be very useful if the site also provided some tips to improve anonymity, particularly if it's low-effort changes such as tweaking a couple of config changes.
I tried various browsers, even the Tor browser, but it keeps showing 'Unique to 1 in 17.179.869.184+ devices'?
It's unique but changes on each reload. While the details are interesting, the fingerprint itself is not useful.
I have the exact same, Unique to 1 in 17,179,869,184+ devices. actually slightly different. hmmm... ,'s vs .'s
the person above you is from The Netherlands ;)
Seems like the fingerprint ID is unique on each refresh in Safari, so fingerprint protection working as intended I presume?
What we need is VPB. Virtual Private Browser like VPNs. Essentially standardised cloud browsers that can execute your requests and send you back the result as bitmap buffers.
I believe Cloudflare has this product already https://www.cloudflare.com/zero-trust/products/browser-isola...
Great idea! How to make sure that the users data stays private without the cloud knowing where the user is surfing. And I wonder how to monetise it? Subscription?
Didn't Stallman himself write and use something in the same vein to browse the internet?
EFF has a similar tool: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
No idea how representative either tool is.
I could not be more thrilled to see tools like this being built. Without tools to see the problems, we will never fix them
Interesting!
For me it says 1 in 17,179,869,184+, but scrolling through all the variables, the vast majority should be the same for any MacBook Chrome user.
It would be great to see the stats of each individual characteristic.
I would love to be able to toggle an attribute off/on to see what affect each has on the uniqueness of my fingerprint. My guess is that there are a handful of _very_ unique things, that if obscured, would make one less recognisable.
I get a new fingerprint id everytime I refresh the page (firefox, linux) -- so that might be sampling a tiny bit too much. audio and canvas fingerprint are constant though so it's probably plenty enough...
The same applies to macOS. Safari produces a unique fingerprint ID every time, and Firefox also has a different fingerprint ID with every visit.
If the fingerprint ID is unique every time, there is zero possibility of using it for identification.
Very interesting. So this is the battlefield perhaps. Randomly corrupt the data instead of eliminating it?
I think it might be because the performance fingerprints need to be bucketed. If they're too specific you'll never get the same fingerprint twice.
Yet on the flip side, if I’m trying to auto identify my own phone for a login-less private app i tried to build I couldn’t get to reliably generate a consistent fingerprint on safari private mode, it regenerates 50% of the time, I’ve tried several libraries like fingerprintjs and co..
Isn't that what webauthn was made for?
Or did I misunderstand you?
How about mTLS?
May I ask if this code is the result of 'vibe coding'?
It looks AI-assisted, based on these two commits: * https://github.com/neberej/exposedbydefault/commit/503bd6519... * https://github.com/neberej/exposedbydefault/commit/16693ba17...
But to what extent should we care for such a small website? The AI witch hunt won't get us too far, and this new way of producing is only getting started. The loss of control to a non-deterministic black box is worrysome, but at some point non-vibe coded (hard coded? brain coded?) software might become less error-prone that vibe-coded
> but at some point non-vibe coded (hard coded? brain coded?) software might become less error-prone that vibe-coded
Did you mean more instead of less?
this seems incredibly variable as to be almost useless as any type of "fingerprint" - running the latest version of Chrome on Android, the ID at the top of the page changes each reload.
It’s just a blank page for me on iOS 26.1 Safari with Lockdown Enabled.
ERROR> https://neberej.github.io/exposedbydefault/assets/index-3936...: Uncaught ReferenceError: speechSynthesis is not defined
seems like brave works well and isn't getting correctly fingerprinted
> Doesn't even load with JS
> Impossible to "expose"
The perks of disabling JS on every site!
This is useless. I think you misunderstand the point of fingerprinting. A powerful fingerprinting algo should strive to detect you as the same person (aprox) while you use two different browsers. A more powerful one will detect you while you use another device. This only detect your current refresh.
Here's another one: https://amiunique.org/fingerprint
It's important to point out fingerprinting, yet no ordinary user cares.