Hacker News Reader

Comment by 293984j29384 | Hacker News Reader

Web-based tracking is done via browser fingerprinting and cookies. IP addresses aren't reliable due to NAT and organizational proxies.

View on HN

Right, IP addresses aren't reliable for tracking because static IPs aren't commonplace. But if they were, then they would be.

I'm not an expert in this area really. I've heard the argument made that even if static IP's were commonplace you would still need other fingerprinting methods as there are entire houses/apartment complexes/businesses running multiple users through NAT behind their static IP.

Also, I'm not sure what your experience has been but my IP only changes very rarely. Seems to happen about once every 6 months. My understanding that this was somewhat common, at least in the land of cable/coax-ISPs. Is 6 months not long enough to glean anything useful?

IPv6 does away with NAT since there are so many IPs that everyone gets one without needing NAT.

But proxies will still group the users on the same IP.

Also mobile devices that connect to different networks would get different IPs. Your cell phone would get a different IP address at home, cell, work, friends house etc... Thus there would still need to be some tracking/fingerprint to follow across networks.

> Web-based tracking is done via browser fingerprinting and cookies.

Which is why I personally surf with cookies disabled/blocked by default. So with dynamic IPv4/IPv6, that leaves only browser fingerprinting.

Do u use a browser extension to re-enable cookies quickly for login?

At home I primarily use Safari and it's quite quick/easy to toggle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com