1import{j as e}from"./index-0qbe4j-K.js";import{P as i}from"./prose-CP3GO64z.js";import{L as n}from"./react-vendor-CuqwDvgQ.js";function o(){return e.jsxs(i,{children:[e.jsx("p",{children:"Blocking cookies feels like the end of tracking. It is not. Cookies are the tracking method that asks permission; the harder problem is everything your browser volunteers before any script has stored a thing."}),e.jsx("h3",{children:"Fingerprinting, briefly"}),e.jsx("p",{children:"Every request carries a user agent, language preferences and accepted encodings. Any script can additionally read your screen dimensions, timezone, colour depth, installed fonts, hardware concurrency, and the precise way your GPU renders a test image."}),e.jsx("p",{children:"None of those identify you alone. Combined, they are frequently unique. That combination is a fingerprint, and it needs no storage - which means clearing cookies, blocking third-party cookies and opening a private window do not reset it."}),e.jsxs("p",{children:["The ",e.jsx(n,{to:"/tools/browser-privacy-check",children:"Browser Privacy Check"})," shows what your current browser exposes. It is worth running before and after a settings change, because the result is usually less encouraging than the change felt."]}),e.jsx("h3",{children:"The uniqueness paradox"}),e.jsxs("p",{children:["Here is the part that catches people out: ",e.jsx("strong",{children:"hardening your browser can make you easier to identify."})," A rare user-agent string, an unusual font set, or an aggressive anti-fingerprinting extension can each make you stand out from millions of ordinary installs."]}),e.jsxs("p",{children:["This is why serious anti-fingerprinting projects pursue ",e.jsx("em",{children:"uniformity"})," rather than obfuscation - making every user look identical, rather than making each one look strange. Stacking privacy extensions often moves you in the opposite direction."]}),e.jsx("h3",{children:"What follows you between sites"}),e.jsx("p",{children:"Cross-site tracking mostly does not depend on fingerprinting at all. It works because the same scripts run on many sites, and because identifiers are handed along in links."}),e.jsxs("ul",{children:[e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"Third-party scripts."})," An analytics or ad script present on a thousand sites sees you on all thousand. The fix is fewer third parties - which, if it is your own site, you can measure with the"," ",e.jsx(n,{to:"/tools/har-analyzer",children:"HAR File Analyzer"}),"."]}),e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"Link decoration."})," ",e.jsx("code",{children:"utm_*"}),", ",e.jsx("code",{children:"fbclid"}),","," ",e.jsx("code",{children:"gclid"})," and friends carry a click identifier into the destination's logs. Sharing a link often shares who you are. Strip them with the"," ",e.jsx(n,{to:"/tools/link-cleaner",children:"Link Cleaner"}),"."]}),e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"The Referer header."})," Your browser tells the destination which page you came from - including, if the site was careless, whatever was in that page's query string."]})]}),e.jsx("h3",{children:"What actually helps"}),e.jsxs("ol",{children:[e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"A content blocker."})," Blocking the script outright beats every measure that tries to confuse a script you still run."]}),e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"A browser with tracking protection on by default"})," - the meaningful protections are the ones you do not have to configure."]}),e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"Separate profiles"})," for accounts you want kept apart. Different profile, different cookie jar, different storage."]}),e.jsxs("li",{children:[e.jsx("strong",{children:"Clean the links you share"})," - it protects the recipient, not you, which is the part people forget."]})]}),e.jsx("h3",{children:"The honest position"}),e.jsx("p",{children:"You cannot make a browser anonymous by adjusting settings. What you can do is cut the number of parties collecting anything, and stop handing identifiers around in links. That is a real reduction, and it is achievable - unlike fingerprint-proofing, which mostly is not."}),e.jsx("p",{children:"The same logic applies to what you build. Every third-party script on your site tracks your visitors whether or not you intended it, and the only reliable way to know how many there are is to look."})]})}
1export{o as default};
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