If you ever clicked a link between 2010 and 2021 and noticed that your browser redirected you several times before taking yo to the correct destination, that was a successful attempt at de-anonymizing you.

What was happening was there was a web of redirects. Each location had a different favicons (the little picture in your browser tab that ids the site visually for you). If your browser had been to that destination before, your browser would have the favicon in cache.

if favicon found, send to redirect free A. If redirect not found, send to redirect tree B.

Then repeat the process. With like 35 redirects you'd have enough binary data to uniquely ID every internet connected device ever made.

Wild.

This was fixed in 2021.

[–] required 1 points 1 year ago

This is horrifying. I'll reset my browser more often, I was already in the habit of doing that