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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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So it says that the fingerprint is unique. What information do I gain from that?
It means that you are not protected. The fingerprint resistance failed. Firefox has very weak fingerprint resistance out of the box, I don't know why they advertise it as being effective. If your fingerprint is unique, it means every site you visit knows exactly who you are and share your visit and actions on that site with all their friends so that you can be tracked through the internet.
To be clear, a unique fingerprint doesn't have to mean you can be tracked. You can set up your browser to randomise attributes, which means you can have a unique fingerprint, but not an unusual fingerprint, and not the same fingerprint on any two visits. That way you can't be singled out from the other users who set up their browsers like this, and if done well, can't be singled out from any first-time visitor.
Is there anything I can do to mask the fingerprint to a degree or am I fucked?
You do have resources to limit fingerprinting, including beating many techniques, but it's involved and I don't have any useful links for you right now. On the site I linked, they provide resources to help you -- including showing you exactly how they fingerprinted you. The easiest-strongest change is disabling javascript (The noscript addon makes this toggle-able and configurable), but of course that breaks all websites.
The information that Google iframe gains on almost every site is that it is you visiting that site, as verified by your unique fingerprint. Into your profile it goes.
Yeah it actually really bad that they can identify every single unique user like this.