Browser fingerprint test: how recognisable are you?

Fingerprints in plain words, and why a proxy doesn't change yours

Any page can ask your browser for hundreds of small details: screen size, time zone, language, installed fonts, the graphics chip, little differences in how it handles sound, and even the exact pixels it produces when it draws a test picture (this last trick is called canvas fingerprinting). One detail on its own says very little about you. Put them all together, though, and the mix is rare: by some estimates a fingerprint is shared by only about 1 in 100,000 users, and often by even fewer.

Here's the catch for anyone using a proxy: changing your IP doesn't change your fingerprint. A new proxy, a VPN or a fresh private window usually leaves it much as it was. That's how advertising trackers and bot checks can link your visits together even while your address keeps changing.

When one shared fingerprint causes trouble

Say you look after a couple of accounts for genuine reasons, perhaps your own small shop and a club you help run, on a platform that allows more than one. You give each its own residential proxy, but open them all in the same browser on the same computer. They now share one fingerprint, so the site can see "one device, several IPs" and treat the accounts as connected. Whatever you set the separate proxies up for, such as keeping projects apart or checking how a site looks from another country, stops working the way you planned.

It matters for privacy as well, because the same fingerprint follows you from visit to visit. Whatever you're doing, stick to each platform's terms of service and the law in your country.

Ways to keep your fingerprint from following you

Profile browsers (often called antidetect browsers)

If you need truly separate profiles, these browsers are the usual tool. Each profile is given its own made-up set of details: different canvas, graphics (WebGL) and sound results, a different font list and different reported hardware. The browser keeps those values the same every time you open that profile, so each one behaves like a steady, separate visitor.

• Multilogin - aimed at agencies that look after a large number of accounts.
• Dolphin Anty - popular with affiliate marketers and social media teams who run several legitimate accounts.
• GoLogin - the lower-cost pick, with most of the same features.
• Incogniton, Kameleo, Vision, AdsPower - other options that do a similar job.

Give each profile its own proxy (one of ours, if you like) and every legitimate account keeps to its own lane. The platform's terms of service still apply.

Free ways to shrink your fingerprint

Don't want another browser? You can still cut down what's trackable with the one you have:

• In Firefox, set privacy.resistFingerprinting = true (type about:config in the address bar to find the setting).
• Use the Tor Browser, which is designed to make everyone using it look the same to fingerprinting scripts.
• Use Brave, whose Shields feature scrambles canvas and font details.
• Turn JavaScript off on sites that work without it. That one step removes roughly 90% of the ways a fingerprint is gathered, though plenty of sites stop working properly without JavaScript.

Can you get rid of a fingerprint completely?

No, but you can make it a lot smaller. The aim isn't to become invisible; it's to have fewer details linking one visit to the next. A separate profile, a clean proxy and a User-Agent that suits the profile together keep different activities apart, such as private browsing, market research, checking adverts and testing. Open this page inside each profile to make sure they don't share details, and use every site within its terms of service and the law that applies to you.