A #WebPrivacy tip.
Fingerprinting is the act of trying to covertly identify a user or distinguish one user from another by reading stuff about their setup. Web sites and web browsers can do this, and your job as a developer is to protect your users from it. #stuartwriting 1/5
One way to think about fingerprinting is as active vs passive. A passive fingerprinting technique is one which uses information that is given to the website by default; an active technique is one which explicitly interrogates the browser for extra information. #stuartwriting 2/5
Browser vendors know that users do not like being tracked, and are continually implementing features to limit fingerprinting. Active fingerprinting techniques are harder because browsers pop up confirmation dialogs: this stops the fingerprinting being covert! #stuartwriting 3/5
In practice, most developers and most businesses have no need to fingerprint users. If you require users to sign in, then they identify themselves to you, with consent, and in a way that they can unilaterally opt out of at any time they choose. This protects their privacy. #stuartwriting 4/5
To learn more about fingerprinting, why it's bad for user privacy, and what you can do as a developer, check out Learn Privacy at https://web.dev/learn/privacy/fingerprinting. And if you like that and want me to write things for you, get in touch! #stuartwriting 5/5
@falken totally. https://web.dev/learn/privacy/fingerprinting/#how-fingerprinting-works goes into a bit more detail on exactly that, because it's a really illustrative resource
@sil was surprised I'm one in two million!
