Outhouse › Surveillance › Identification

Browser fingerprinting

Reading the browser's graphics, audio and fonts to recognise a visitor without cookies.

Why it matters

Cookies can be cleared. A browser's graphics card, its audio stack and the fonts it has installed cannot, at least not by anyone who wants to keep using it. Fingerprinting reads these and combines them into an identifier that survives every privacy setting the visitor has found.

The visitor clears their cookies, opens a private window and returns. They are welcomed back by name, in a manner of speaking.

How Outhouse measures it

On server grades, Outhouse watches from page load for canvas images read back, the graphics card's name queried, audio rendered off screen and more than 200 font measurements. Two kinds or more scores in full. Grades run in your own browser do not measure this.

This audit counts towards Surveillance, with a weight of 3. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

Install Shitely Profile. It is included on every plan. See all products.

Related audits

• Identity resolution: Services that match a visitor's identity across sites and companies.
• Long-lived cookies: Cookies set to outlast the visitor's interest in the site.