Browser Fingerprinting: A Survey

Pierre Laperdrix (1) , Nataliia Bielova (2) , Benoit Baudry (3) , Gildas Avoine (4)

1 SPIRALS - Self-adaptation for distributed services and large software systems
2 PRIVATICS - Privacy Models, Architectures and Tools for the Information Society
3 KTH - KTH Royal Institute of Technology [Stockholm]
4 ASCII - Analyse d’interactions stochastiques intelligentes et coopératives

With this article, we survey the research performed in the domain of browser fingerprinting, while providing an accessible entry point to newcomers in the field. We explain how this technique works and where it stems from. We analyze the related work in detail to understand the composition of modern fingerprints and see how this technique is currently used online. We systematize existing defense solutions into different categories and detail the current challenges yet to overcome.

Keywords: Security and privacy; Human and societal aspects; Privacy protections; Software and application security; Web application security; Systems security; Browser security; Browser fingerprinting; User privacy; Security and privacy

Domains: Web

Pierre Laperdrix, Nataliia Bielova, Benoit Baudry, Gildas Avoine. Browser Fingerprinting: A Survey. ACM Transactions on the Web, 2020, 14 (2), pp.1-33. ⟨10.1145/3386040⟩. ⟨hal-02864872⟩