Canvas Fingerprinting

Canvas Fingerprinting found on above 5% Websites by Researchers

We have previously conversed browser fingerprinting in complexity earlier. It is among the many sneakier means established by websites plus marketing analytics to trail and identify each web user uniquely so that advertising can be more targeted and is a response to users becoming extra conscious of their privacy at risk by HTTP cookies.

It is an unusual type of browser fingerprinting which is

established and used over 95% by network analytics firm AddThis. Plus other companies like German digital Ligatus and Plenty of fish are guilty as well.

This script works when it asked your browser to make a concealed double, and it uses the minor differences in the way the image is drawn to get an exclusive ID code that can be dangerous as it is used to trail you. In the present-day, there is no way to stop this, but customers can install AddThis opt-out cookie, to not take part in targeted advertising. But if you do that, it means that you have to put your trust in AddThis to retain their word and not target you with ads plus keep you away from fingerprinting.

A few of the popular websites that run AddThis script canvas are YouPorn.com and Whitehouse.gov. Despite that, a representative of YouPorn got in contact with Pro Publica to speak that they were completely oblivious to that fact that AddThis had stalking software that can very much threaten the user’s privacy. Ligatus also stated that it does not use the script anymore, and they doubt that Whitehouse may still be using AddThis.

At Princeton University, a group of researchers revealed 5.5% of the 100,000 popular websites that they snuck have been handling the script of canvas. Even though the majority of the scripts are property of AddThis, it was exposed that a whole of around 20 canvas fingerprinting supplier domains are available on 5542 of the popular 100,000 websites.

If you want to have a look at the complete tilt of the websites that were discovered to be working behind canvas script.