On the workings and current practices of web-based device fingerprinting

Analysis of three commercial companies' browser-fi ngerprinting code reveals the techniques that allow websites to track users without client-side identifi ers. Questionable practices include the circumvention of HTTP proxies to discover a user's real IP address and the installation of intrusive browser plug-ins. In addition, commercial approaches can bypass user-agent-spoofi ng browser extensions. © 2014 IEEE.status: publishe