Google ads open device fingerprinting as a cookie replacement
What happened
On October 12 the Hacker News front page reported that Google has enabled device fingerprinting in its ad products as a tracking method to replace third-party cookies. The report says User-Agent, IP address and hardware traits such as GPU, CPU, memory, screen resolution and audio processing, combined, are enough to distinguish users in a sample. It also covers browser responses: Brave injects noise through farbling, Tor and Mullvad make users' fingerprints converge, while Chrome and Edge stop at isolation.
Written by AI from the coverage · updated 1 hour ago
Coverage
Follow the reports to see the story from different sides.
- Hacker News front pageFingerprints are the new cookies
Google 已在其广告产品中开放设备指纹识别，作为第三方 cookies 的替代追踪手段。浏览器请求中的 User-Agent、IP 地址，加上 GPU、CPU、内存、屏幕分辨率、音频处理等硬件特征，组合后足以在样本中区分用户。Brave 用 farbling 注入噪声、Tor 和 Mullvad 让所有用户指纹趋同，但 Chrome 与 Edge 的保护仍止步于隔离。
Heat over time
Not enough continuous observations to draw a trend yet.