This author doesn’t seem to know what they’re talking about. Just because the service generated the same ID for their Chromium sessions doesn’t mean that applies to all users’ Chromium sessions. Chromium just exposes more of their machine. My guess is that they, writing a computer-technical blog post, have a particularly unique machine. Even having 16Gb of RAM separates you from the masses and might make you unique depending on graphics card etc..
The fingerprinting discussion is relatively new. The first research paper’s author is only 35 or so. (Its title is Cookie Monster.) The discussion is also a little amusing on a site like Hacker News. A perfect example of someone who’s easy to fingerprint is someone who built their own computer (likely to be found on HN). On the opposite end of the spectrum, Safari iPhone users with the same model are impossible to distinguish.
There’s a paper out there where the researchers worked with a public entity’s website to get more accurate fingerprinting data. There are very few unique fingerprints in reality and therefore no reason for any company to track them. This tech probably won’t ever identify users uniquely.
There are actually some positive aspects of fingerprinting. Tor leaves a very obvious fingerprint, and it’s easy for banks to detect its use by criminals.
The fingerprinting discussion is relatively new. The first research paper’s author is only 35 or so. (Its title is Cookie Monster.) The discussion is also a little amusing on a site like Hacker News. A perfect example of someone who’s easy to fingerprint is someone who built their own computer (likely to be found on HN). On the opposite end of the spectrum, Safari iPhone users with the same model are impossible to distinguish.
There’s a paper out there where the researchers worked with a public entity’s website to get more accurate fingerprinting data. There are very few unique fingerprints in reality and therefore no reason for any company to track them. This tech probably won’t ever identify users uniquely.
There are actually some positive aspects of fingerprinting. Tor leaves a very obvious fingerprint, and it’s easy for banks to detect its use by criminals.