this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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They were doing this a decade ago, to help track app marketing campaigns.
IIRC, it turned out you could get pretty close to uniquely identifying a device with permutations on only 7 attributes. The problem is if you install a plugin to return false data, it could break non-malicious websites, like running games or data visualizations.
Am I misunderstanding something? Wouldn't that just be 7! = 5040 possibilities?
You're mistakenly assuming the attributes are binary, stuff like screen resolution, regions, languages all have many possible values to help narrow down and identify you. It really doesn't take that many for you to be identifiable.
Oh right, thanks