Device Fingerprinting: An Emerging Threat to Online Privacy

Abstract

I briefly discuss online privacy in relation to cookie-based tracking and targeted advertising in order to introduce the idea of fingerprinting. I look at the mathematics behind fingerprinting before introducing some basic fingerprinting code that I have implemented. I go into detail about Fight Fingerprinting, a browser extension I have built that aims to detect and reduce the threat of fingerprinting. I discuss some of the related work done in the area of fingerprinting and consider some other solutions that are out there.