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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

Re-Captcha doesn't fingerprint users. It uses statistical models to guess whether a particular user is a bot or not; it doesn't de-anonymize users or identify them in any way.

Analytics doesn't either, it uses regular cookies. (See sibling comments.)

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Statistical models based on what? Browser characteristics that could also be used for fingerprinting?

Cookies, browser characteristics, user behavior, etc. Just because a certain bit of information could theoretically be used for fingerprinting users, doesn't mean any system that uses that information is doing fingerprinting.

Agreed, but it's incredibly naive to assume they are not. Google's product is it's users, and it's a known fact they manipulate results based on what they want you to think or what they think you want to see. They are completely shady on privacy.

I don't know why HN seems to be so stubborn about things like this. It's clear as day they fingerprint users, but seems like the majority of users here refuse to believe a corporation or government has done anything wrong unless they literally admit it in a press release.

IP address, the client/user ID, type of interaction, timestamp and a few other bits of data like your device hardware.

GA isn't nearly as invasive as people think. The real problem is data being combined on the backed and correlated across websites by ad networks, not the analytics itself.

Edit: Worth a look if you're interested in what's being collected: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

> IP address, the client/user ID, type of interaction, timestamp and a few other bits of data like your device hardware.

Unfortunately, that sounds exactly like the set of information that can be used to fingerprint users.

So...fingerprinting?

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