Browser fingerprinting how to prevent

Browser Fingerprinting: What It Is and How to Prevent It

Browser fingerprinting is an advanced tracking method that collects data from your browser and device to create a unique identifier. This identifier can track you across websites, even if you clear cookies or use a VPN. It’s stealthy, persistent, and used by 25% of the top 10,000 websites.

Key points:

• What it collects: Screen resolution, fonts, time zone, hardware specs, and more.
• How it works: Techniques like canvas, WebGL, and audio fingerprinting analyze your device’s unique traits.
• Why it matters: It’s used to track behavior, link accounts, and even adjust pricing based on your profile.
• Risks for professionals: Multi-account users (e.g., marketers, e-commerce managers) face bans or suspensions if platforms detect linked accounts.

How to Protect Yourself:

1. Use tools like GoUndetected to mask your fingerprint with isolated browser profiles.
2. Add privacy-focused browser extensions (e.g., uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger).
3. Adjust browser settings to block trackers and limit hardware access.
4. Combine with proxies or VPNs for added IP masking.

Browser fingerprinting is hard to avoid entirely, but with the right tools and techniques, you can reduce your exposure and protect your online privacy.

Browser Fingerprinting Masterclass: How It Works & How To Protect Yourself

What Is Browser Fingerprinting?

Browser fingerprinting is a method used to track users by compiling a wide range of data points from their browser and device. Unlike cookies, which store tracking files directly on your computer, fingerprinting works by analyzing your hardware and software attributes to create a unique identifier. This includes details like your screen resolution, installed fonts, time zone, language preferences, and even your graphics card specifications .

Individually, these data points might not seem unique. But when combined, they form a profile capable of distinguishing you from millions of others. Research indicates that 80–90% of fingerprints are unique, and identification accuracy can reach up to 99% . This means platforms can recognize you even if you delete your cookies, switch browsers, or use a VPN, which is why many professionals are switching to an undetected browser for better protection.

What makes this technique even more concerning is its stealth. The scripts operate in the background, blending seamlessly with the website’s code. Unlike cookies, you won’t see pop-ups or consent banners - it’s automatic, happening the moment you visit a page.

How Browser Fingerprinting Identifies Users

Browser fingerprinting collects data across several categories, building a detailed profile of your device and browsing environment. Here’s how it works:

• Browser Attributes: These include your user-agent string (revealing browser type and version), preferred language, installed extensions, and whether you use an ad blocker.
• Device Specifications: This captures details like your operating system, CPU architecture, number of processor cores, RAM size, and hardware identifiers for audio and video cards.
• Display Details: Information such as screen resolution, color depth, browser window size, system fonts, and keyboard layout is also recorded.
• Environmental Data: Time zone, IP address, and even battery level contribute to refining your profile.

Some techniques go a step further by making your browser perform invisible tasks. For instance, canvas fingerprinting forces your browser to draw hidden shapes and text using HTML5. The way your graphics card renders these elements creates a unique "hash" identifier with an accuracy of 99.5%. Other methods like WebGL fingerprinting analyze your 3D rendering capabilities, while audio fingerprinting examines how your device processes sound samples, revealing details about your audio hardware and drivers.

An infamous example of this occurred in July 2014, when ProPublica revealed that AddThis, a social-sharing company, was using canvas fingerprinting to track users across thousands of websites. These included high-profile sites like the White House’s official page and YouPorn. The scripts drew invisible images to identify users, sidestepping traditional cookie-based tracking methods.

"A fingerprint can not be removed, since it does not store anything on the users' machine" - Electronic Frontier Foundation

Since nothing is saved locally on your device, there’s no way to delete it. The data resides on remote servers, making it nearly impossible to block or remove without disrupting how websites function. This level of data collection raises serious privacy concerns, as it allows platforms to build precise identifiers without your knowledge or consent.

How Does Browser Fingerprinting Work?

How Browser Fingerprinting Works: Data Collection to Tracking

Browser fingerprinting works by gathering various data points from your device and browser to create a unique identifier. This happens automatically through scripts embedded in websites, often without any visible signs of tracking. The collected information is processed into a unique hash, which serves as a persistent ID stored on remote servers. Since your hardware and software characteristics tend to stay consistent, this ID allows trackers to recognize you across different sessions and websites.

Even if some details - like your IP address or browser version - change, stable attributes such as screen resolution, installed fonts, and graphics card details make it easy to identify you. Research from 2020 revealed that 25% of the top 10,000 websites used fingerprinting scripts, showing just how common this tracking method has become.

"With the fingerprinting, it's all invisible. People don't know about it; they don't see it." - David Emm, Principal Security Researcher, Kaspersky

There are two main ways this data is collected: passive fingerprinting and active fingerprinting. Passive fingerprinting relies on information your browser automatically shares, like HTTP headers and the User-Agent string. Active fingerprinting, on the other hand, uses JavaScript to probe your browser for additional details. Active methods are more intrusive, often triggering hidden tasks to extract hardware-specific information. Below, we’ll dive into the techniques used to generate these identifiers.

Common Browser Fingerprinting Techniques

Trackers use a variety of methods to create unique profiles, each targeting specific aspects of your system.

• Canvas fingerprinting: This technique uses the HTML5 canvas element to make your browser draw invisible images or text. Variations in how these elements render - caused by your graphics card, drivers, and operating system - create a unique signature. This method alone can identify users with an accuracy of 99.5%.
• WebGL fingerprinting: Similar to canvas fingerprinting, this method focuses on 3D graphics rendering. By generating off-screen 3D images and analyzing how your GPU processes them, trackers can gather detailed information about your graphics hardware and system configuration.
• Audio fingerprinting: Using the AudioContext API, scripts generate sound signals and analyze the resulting waves. Variations in how your device processes audio - shaped by your sound card, drivers, and audio stack - add another distinct layer to your profile.
• User-Agent analysis: This simpler method reads the User-Agent string your browser sends with every request. It reveals details like your browser type, version, and operating system. While major browsers are reducing the level of detail in these strings, they still provide useful baseline data for trackers.
• Media device enumeration: Scripts can request a list of all audio and video devices connected to your system, such as microphones, webcams, and speakers, along with their unique device IDs.
• Font detection: By checking which fonts are installed on your system, trackers can use the unique combination of fonts to identify you, as font setups vary widely between users.
• Browser extension detection: Identifying which plugins or extensions you have installed provides another way to narrow down your profile.

A 2016 study highlighted the effectiveness of these combined methods, showing that 81% of website visitors could be uniquely identified through fingerprinting. The accuracy of device fingerprinting ranges from 90% to 99%, making it even more reliable than traditional cookie-based tracking.

How Fingerprints Are Stored and Tracked

Once your device attributes are collected, they are aggregated and converted into a hash - a compact digital signature stored in databases managed by websites or third-party trackers. Unlike cookies, which are stored on your device and can be deleted, these fingerprints are stored remotely, making them harder to erase.

The real power of fingerprinting lies in cross-site tracking. Ad tech companies and data brokers embed identical fingerprinting scripts across numerous websites. When you visit any site using these scripts, the tracker matches your unique hash to a persistent profile, mapping your browsing behavior across the web - often without your knowledge.

"There are so many data sets available today, and there are so many other means to connect your fingerprint with other identifying information." - Nataliia Bielova, Research Scientist, CNIL

The stability of your hardware and software characteristics ensures your fingerprint remains consistent over time. Attributes like screen resolution, graphics card, and installed fonts rarely change, allowing trackers to reliably identify you across sessions.

Fingerprinting is increasingly being used to bypass privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Since it operates silently and doesn’t rely on storing files on your device, it sidesteps cookie consent mechanisms, making the tracking both invisible and automatic. This persistence poses significant challenges for professionals managing multiple accounts or prioritizing online privacy.

Why Browser Fingerprinting Is a Problem for Professionals

Browser fingerprinting poses serious challenges for professionals who manage multiple online accounts or deal with sensitive business activities. Unlike cookies, which can be deleted with a few clicks, a browser fingerprint is built from detailed hardware and software configurations that are nearly impossible to change.

The key problem? Almost every browser fingerprint is unique, making it easy for platforms to identify users, even when they attempt to stay anonymous. This can expose professionals to detection when they operate multiple accounts on the same device.

Multi-Account Management Challenges

The unchangeable nature of browser fingerprints makes managing multiple accounts a logistical nightmare. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and TikTok use fingerprinting to spot and flag multiple accounts, often leading to account suspensions or outright bans. This is a direct problem for social media marketers juggling client accounts, e-commerce sellers managing multiple stores, or affiliate marketers running separate campaigns.

Using tools like VPNs or incognito mode might hide your IP address and cookies, but they do nothing to disguise your browser's unique fingerprint. Security systems on these platforms are designed to detect inconsistencies. For instance, even simple tricks like changing your User-Agent string without addressing other browser characteristics can set off alarms, as these mismatches are treated as fraudulent activity.

But the challenges don’t stop at account management - fingerprinting also introduces serious privacy and security risks.

Privacy and Security Risks

Browser fingerprinting enables tracking across multiple websites, often without your knowledge. Over 10,000 of the most popular websites use fingerprinting scripts to monitor user behavior across unrelated sites.

"The reason why fingerprinting exists is to circumvent the normal controls users have that enable them to control their own browsers." - Electronic Frontier Foundation

This type of tracking can expose sensitive business information. For example, e-commerce platforms might use fingerprints to identify high-value customers and adjust prices accordingly. If your device signals higher purchasing power - like when researching business tools or booking travel - you could face inflated prices.

Data brokers add another layer of risk by combining fingerprint-derived browsing data with offline records. This creates a detailed profile that could expose sensitive business activities or lead to compliance issues, especially for professionals in regulated industries or those handling client data. With fingerprinting boasting accuracy rates between 90% and 99%, it’s far more effective than cookie-based tracking and significantly harder to avoid.

Recognizing these vulnerabilities highlights the importance of adopting strong anti-detection tools to protect your privacy and professional activities.

How to Prevent Browser Fingerprinting with GoUndetected

GoUndetected offers a specialized solution for professionals managing multiple accounts, tackling the challenges of browser fingerprinting head-on. Unlike VPNs or incognito mode, which still leave parts of your digital fingerprint exposed, GoUndetected addresses over 50 data points simultaneously. These include hardware (like GPU, CPU, and RAM), software (such as operating systems and fonts), and network parameters (IP address, WebRTC, and timezone), ensuring everything aligns seamlessly. By creating isolated browser profiles with stable fingerprints, the platform helps keep activities separate and prevents platforms from linking accounts.

GoUndetected Features

GoUndetected simplifies multi-account management by masking digital fingerprints across multiple layers, creating consistent and isolated identities. It mimics hardware graphics rendering to block websites from exploiting hidden canvas or 3D elements to extract hardware or driver hashes. The platform also uses canvas and WebGL spoofing to generate realistic outputs for each profile and shields your device's audio processing stack to prevent unique audio fingerprinting.

Additionally, it manages SSL/TLS handshake (JA3 fingerprinting) and HTTP/2 behavior at the transport layer, ensuring your connection signature matches the browser's claimed identity. When assigning a proxy to a profile, the system automatically syncs the browser's timezone, language, and WebRTC data with the proxy’s IP address, eliminating inconsistencies that could trigger fraud detection.

Rather than relying on randomization, which can create detectable anomalies, GoUndetected generates natural fingerprints. These consistent digital identities blend in seamlessly with genuine users, helping professionals maintain secure and credible multi-account operations.

Setting Up GoUndetected

When you create a new browser profile, GoUndetected automatically generates a unique fingerprint with randomized parameters across more than 50 browser characteristics. Assign a proxy (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, or SOCKS5) to the profile, and the platform will sync timezone, language, and geolocation settings to match the proxy's location. Once set up, launch the profile to browse using a Chromium-based engine that isolates cookies, storage, and fingerprints from all other profiles.

For best results, ensure your proxy aligns with the profile's claimed location. For example, if you're emulating a device in New York, make sure the proxy IP, timezone, and language settings reflect that region. This consistency helps maintain credibility across browsing sessions.

Using GoUndetected for Multi-Account Workflows

GoUndetected includes tools designed to streamline workflows for teams and agencies. You can organize profiles into folders by client or project and assign role-based permissions - like Admin, Manager, or Operator - to control who can create, assign, or use specific profiles. Profiles can also be shared with team members without revealing login credentials, and session locking prevents simultaneous access to the same profile.

Cloud sync ensures you can switch between office and home setups without manually transferring data. Bulk actions let you create, rename, delete, or edit multiple profiles in one go. For automation, the RESTful API integrates with frameworks like Selenium, Puppeteer, and Playwright, handling up to 1,200 requests per minute.

GoUndetected also prioritizes security and reliability. All session data is protected with AES-256 encryption, and the platform boasts 99.99% historical uptime by using AWS and Google Cloud for load balancing. For added peace of mind, support engineers are available 24/7, with an average response time of just three minutes to keep your operations running smoothly.

Other Ways to Prevent Browser Fingerprinting

Beyond using GoUndetected, there are several additional tools and techniques that can help minimize your online footprint and enhance privacy.

Privacy Extensions and Browser Settings

Certain browser extensions are designed to block trackers and scripts that compromise your privacy. For instance, uBlock Origin prevents tracking scripts, while Privacy Badger identifies and blocks invisible trackers as you browse. If you're looking to take it a step further, NoScript disables JavaScript entirely - though this can disrupt how some websites function.

For more targeted protection, extensions like CanvasBlocker and WebGL Fingerprint Defender inject fake values to obscure canvas and WebGL data, making it harder for websites to identify your hardware. A test conducted by Gavin Phillips in January 2026 for MakeUseOf demonstrated the effectiveness of the Fingerprint Spoofer extension. Using EFF's Cover Your Tracks tool, he found that enabling the extension reduced his WebGL fingerprint's uniqueness from 1 in 634 browsers to 1 in 2.7, significantly limiting the ability to create a persistent profile.

If you're a Firefox user, you can activate built-in fingerprinting resistance by typing about:config in the address bar and setting privacy.resistFingerprinting to true. Chrome and Edge users, on the other hand, can enhance privacy by blocking third-party cookies and limiting hardware permissions, such as camera and microphone access.

Using Proxies and VPNs

While GoUndetected offers comprehensive protection, combining it with proxies or VPNs adds another layer of security by masking your IP address. Keep in mind, though, that these tools won't change browser-level details like screen resolution or installed fonts. It's crucial to align your network identity with your browser fingerprint - mismatched settings (e.g., IP location versus timezone) can alert fraud detection systems.

For better results, residential and mobile proxies are more effective than datacenter proxies, as they resemble typical user connections. For those seeking maximum anonymity, a method called "Onion over VPN" is an option. This involves connecting to a VPN first and then using the Tor Browser, which hides your IP from both your internet service provider and Tor's entry node.

"A VPN can't stop browser fingerprinting entirely, but it still does a lot to protect your privacy... it takes IP tracking out of the picture, making it much harder to connect any fingerprint data to your real identity or location."
– Michael Pedley, Writer, ExpressVPN

Separating Profiles by Task

Using separate browser profiles for different activities is another effective way to prevent platforms from linking your online behaviors. For example, Firefox's Multi-Account Containers allow you to isolate cookies and storage for tasks like social media, work, or shopping - all within the same browser window. This ensures that tracking scripts in one container cannot access data from another.

It’s also worth noting that sticking to standard configurations helps reduce your distinctiveness. Over-customization can make you more identifiable, so blending into a "privacy pool" by using common settings is a smarter choice. Tools like the Tor Browser even incorporate features like letterboxing, which standardizes window sizes to prevent screen-resolution tracking.

"The goal with avoiding fingerprinting is to become a Jane Doe online; you want to disappear in the crowd, so every piece of data that makes you stand out sends up a red flag."
– Jacob Roach, Product Writer and Reviewer, WIRED

GoUndetected Pricing Plans

GoUndetected has crafted three subscription tiers tailored to meet the needs of both solo users and large agencies. Each plan includes 24/7 expert support and essential anti-detection tools like unique fingerprints for profiles, IP cloaking, and encrypted sessions. These plans are designed to provide consistent security for managing multiple accounts, regardless of scale.

The Basic plan is priced at $39/month and offers 50 profiles, making it ideal for individual professionals. However, it lacks team collaboration features, so it’s best suited for solo users managing accounts independently.

For teams that require profile sharing and workflow coordination, the Team plan costs $69/month and supports up to 200 profiles. This tier introduces team member access and smart folder management, enabling multiple users to securely work with shared fingerprints without risking platform bans. These added features make it a solid choice for collaborative, secure multi-account management.

The For Agencies plan is designed for large-scale operations and costs $699/month. It provides unlimited profiles, along with exclusive perks like a dedicated Slack channel and personal support for handling complex setups. The unlimited profiles ensure privacy and efficiency for high-volume account management.

Plan Comparison Table

Conclusion

Browser fingerprinting is a major threat to online privacy. It works silently and effectively, tracking users with an accuracy of 90–99%, even when you're using tools like VPNs, clearing your browser history, or switching to incognito mode. The profiles built from this data can be exploited for things like dynamic pricing or tracking your activity across multiple sites.

For professionals managing multiple accounts, fingerprinting poses another risk - it can detect account sharing or flag unusual behavior, leading to bans or restrictions. This is where GoUndetected steps in. By creating distinct, natural-looking fingerprints for each profile, it ensures your accounts stay separate. Its IP cloaking and encrypted sessions add another layer of protection to your multi-account management.

To go further in safeguarding your privacy, consider adding tools like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger to your browser. Align your system settings with your proxy's location and regularly test your fingerprint on platforms like AmIUnique.org. These combined efforts make it much harder for trackers to piece together a consistent profile of your activities. The risks are serious, but you can take steps today to protect yourself.

Next Steps

Now that you're aware of the risks, it's time to act. Start by selecting a GoUndetected plan that aligns with your needs - whether it’s 50 profiles for $39/month or unlimited profiles for $699/month. Once you’ve chosen, set up your first browser profile with a unique fingerprint and pair it with a reliable proxy to mask your IP address.

Next, test your setup on tools like BrowserLeaks.com or Cover Your Tracks to confirm that your fingerprint looks natural and matches your proxy location. Add privacy-focused extensions like NoScript to block JavaScript-based tracking, and manually adjust your timezone and language settings to match your proxy's region. By combining GoUndetected with these measures, you can maintain your anonymity and protect your online identity across all professional activities.