ProPublica and Mashable: Meet the Online Tracking Device That is Virtually Impossible to Block
ProPublica and Mashable report on “canvas fingerprinting,” which is a new kind of online tracking tool. The report discusses a paper documenting canvas fingerprinting, “The Web never forgets: Persistent tracking mechanisms in the wild,” from researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium. The researchers are: Gunes Acar, Christian Eubank, Steven Englehardt, Marc Juarez1, Arvind Narayanan and Claudia Diaz. ProPublica and Mashable report:
[T]his type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it.
Like other tracking tools, canvas fingerprints are used to build profiles of users based on the websites they visit — profiles that shape which ads, news articles, or other types of content are displayed to them.
But fingerprints are unusually hard to block: They can’t be prevented by using standard Web browser privacy settings or using anti-tracking tools such as AdBlock Plus.
The researchers found canvas fingerprinting computer code, primarily written by a company called AddThis, on 5 percent of the top 100,000 websites. Most of the code was on websites that use AddThis’ social media sharing tools. Other fingerprinters include the German digital marketer Ligatus and the Canadian dating site Plentyoffish. (A list of all the websites on which researchers found the code is here). […]
[Rich Harris, chief executive of AddThis,] said the company considered the privacy implications of canvas fingerprinting before launching the test, but decided “this is well within the rules and regulations and laws and policies that we have.”
He added that the company has only used the data collected from canvas fingerprints for internal research and development. The company won’t use the data for ad targeting or personalization if users install the AddThis opt-out cookie on their computers, he said.
Arvind Narayanan, the computer science professor who led the Princeton research team, countered that forcing users to take AddThis at its word about how their data will be used, is “not the best privacy assurance.” […]
AddThis did not notify the websites on which the code was placed because “we conduct R&D projects in live environments to get the best results from testing,” according to a spokeswoman.
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