What is a browser fingerprint and how to combat it?

A digital fingerprint or browser fingerprinting is a method of passively collecting information about your device and software. Unlike cookies, which websites save to your disk, fingerprinting uses unique system characteristics. These include screen resolution, installed fonts, operating system version, processor type, graphics card, language settings, and even how your browser renders graphics using Canvas and WebGL technologies.

By combining these parameters together, scripts on websites form a unique identifier for a specific device. The probability that two different users will share the exact same combination of all these factors is extremely low. This allows advertising networks and analytical companies to recognize you across different sites even after completely clearing cookies and changing your IP address. Fingerprinting works silently and does not require user consent, as it uses standard capabilities of web standards.