I think the author might be misunderstanding the fingerprint test — having a unique fingerprint is bad, as it allows tracking of you by fingerprinting, without the need for cookies.
Correct.
FWIW (disclaimer: I'm the developer of StopTheMadness Pro, mentioned in the article) I just ran two tests in Mac Safari, with StopTheMadness Pro enabled and disabled, and the results were exactly the same each time: "at least 18.06 bits of identifying information". Alas, that's a unique fingerprint, but apparently my extension doesn't make anything worse. If you look at the detailed results, the identifiers are things like User-Agent, screen size, time zone, and language.
One relatively small complaint if you don’t mind me hijacking this thread. The update process could be a lot better! Especially on Firefox. I’m used to it now, so it’s become just a bit of an annoyance but the first few times were tense moments, and especially panic inducing a couple times when I was pressed for time and couldn’t use the browser before updating the extension.
In any case, it’s an awesome extension and I recommend it to others frequently!
(also, thanks for StopTheMadness Pro!)
Having a unique fingerprint is ideal, as long as it's unique every time. It's insane to think that you can successfully account for every data point that can be collected from a browser. Fingerprinting techniques are changed and new methods are being discovered even while browsers themselves keep adding new features that can be used (or abused) to identify people.
Rather than praying that you (and some fingerprinting website) are 100% aware of every single technique that's ever been used anywhere and that nothing new will be discovered giving trackers even just a single unique data point which is all they need to tell you apart from everyone else, it's a lot safer to appear to be someone new with every request.
I assume ad networks and analytics are the main ones actually fingerprinting based on client-side factors. I could be totally wrong.
Any reasonable adblocker that prevents requests to those services probably neuters 99% of any fingerprinting capability that anyone is going to encounter day to day.
I had a look at Kagi official discord and Vlad (HN: @freediver) says they let the eff test run as non-malicious, i.e. other sites may not be able to see as much.
That being said I was a lifelong Windows user up until 5-6 years ago, and while everyone else in my family uses apple devices I was never interested in using one(since I like building my own PCs :p)