The Impact Of Browser Fingerprinting On Individuals

The Journalist

Indonesia has one of the worst scores for government corruption and due process in the world, a subject that comes up whenever anyone criticizes their government. A fact checker who dared to investigate a nepotism denial was targeted by hackers from a political group in September 2020.

After being fingerprinted and his online identity correlated with his real-life name, Cakrayuni Nuralam became a victim. He and his family were doxxed, harassed, and threatened. His home was also put under surveillance.

Attacks on journalists are nothing new of course. In 2023, there have been 81 journalists killed, with 8 of those confirmed as "murders" according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Generally speaking, either the government doesn’t want to solve these cases or they’re directly involved. This results in over 87% of journalist murders remaining unsolved since 2006.

The Climate Activist

One wouldn’t expect an anonymous mail service to hand over fingerprint information to government officials, but that's exactly what happened in September of 2021. Protonmail was subpoenaed by Swiss law enforcement for the communication history and browser fingerprint information of the Youth For Climate group operating out of France.

Protonmail claimed that although they fight against hundreds of law enforcement requests per year, this one was clear cut and they had to hand over the browser fingerprint information.

One activist was peacefully occupying a building that was scheduled to be gentrified as part of a controversial neighborhood ‘upscaling’ project. Then, in the dead of night, he was raided at his home. He had been identified because of his browser fingerprints. Protonmail handed over everything the cops needed to link their online activity with their real identity. They were arrested, interrogated, and thrown into a cell.

The Child Watching Videos

One of the first known cases of browser fingerprinting being used to identify individuals was the Nickelodeon Consumer Privacy Litigation. Chillingly, it involved sharing the private information of children under the age of 13.

Browser fingerprints and metadata were being used by Nickelodeon to analyze a child’s viewing habits and other browsing behavior. This child, one of around a dozen mentioned in the court case, had no idea that multiple companies were analyzing their viewing patterns, habits, and preferences. Of course, the child wasn’t of legal age to enter into any sort of binding agreement, or to consent to have their data compiled and used - even if such notification was offered.

To make matters worse, that data was shared with both Viacom and Google for various purposes, ranging from further analysis of the child’s habits to raw web analytics.

Now, as it turned out, the individual children couldn’t be identified with just the browser data… at the time there wasn’t enough data to create a complete, unique profile. But the fact remained that these companies lied to the parents about the data that was being collected. A message to parents read:

‘HEY GROWN-UPS: We don’t collect ANY personal information about your kids. This means we couldn’t share it even if we wanted to!’

One of the lawyers on the case, Alexandra Rengel, had a prophetic glimpse into the kind of browser fingerprinting activities that have become the norm in this decade. She said:

‘In this newly commoditized information market, buyers everywhere can collate and manipulate data for marketing, profiling, and, in some instances, nefarious purposes. Individuals have little ability to control this collection or manipulation of their data. Not only does much of this happen far from the reach of regulators, but most people are not even aware of what information has been collected about them or for what purpose it is being used.’

You

That’s right, you. Browser fingerprinting already has, or will in the near future, impact you or someone you love. If you or your family use the Internet, it’s quite likely that someone out there has already collected information about your habits, hardware, and software. You can test this by going to AmIUnique and seeing what kind of profile information shows up.

If you want to learn more about a privacy app that can be used to render browser fingerprinting useless in 2023 and beyond, check out and download the Hoody app.