Amidst the glossy marketing for VPN services, it can be tempting to believe that the moment you flick on the VPN connection you can browse the internet with full privacy. Unfortunately this is quite far from the truth, as interacting with internet services like websites leaves a significant fingerprint. In a study by [RTINGS.com] this browser fingerprinting was investigated in detail, showing just how easy it is to uniquely identify a visitor across the 83 laptops used in the study.
As summarized in the related video (also embedded below), the start of the study involved the Am I Unique? website which provides you with an overview of your browser fingerprint. With over 4.5 million fingerprints in their database as of writing, even using Edge on Windows 10 marks you as unique, which is telling.
I remember in 1996 my neighbor was in one of these fancy new things on the internet called a “chat room”.
He got into an arguement with someone. It got heated. Until the other guy threatened to show up at my neighbors house.
My neighbor scoffed and laughed.
Then the guy put in my neighbors real address. To this day, that still scares me. And back then internet crime wasn’t taken seriously. In fact doxxing back then may not yet have even been a crime.
Those were the days where if you knew someone’s real name and town that they lived, you could just go and get the telephone directory for that area (the library had all of them) and look up their address and phone number. It would have to be quite a big town before you found multiple people with the same name.
FYI:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/doxxing-free-speech-and-first-amendment
In the US, “doxxing” laws are pretty much state-by-state and many may be violating the first amendment.