I found a tool that reveals the scary reality of how much you’re tracked online

It’s no secret that web browsing is nothing short of a risky adventure where your activity is most likely being tracked, and the digital footprints you leave are used to create a unique profile. But why, you might ask. Well, the most benign answer is that tracking helps push more relevant ads. 

If you’ve visited a few blogs focused on gardening, you will soon see (or be shown) ads hawking pots and seeds, instead of a bike. Ad-targeting, in a nutshell. On the more sinister side of things, your digital tracks could be used to steal your personal data, identity theft, seed malware, or surveillance.  

So, is there a way to find just how good ( or leaky) your web browser is? Well, there is no foolproof benchmark that can definitively rank which browser is the best or worst. Thankfully, there’s a tool that can help you gauge the extent of fingerprinting and tracking that a browser does, to help you make an informed choice. 

What’s the magic tool?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit digital rights group with a focus on privacy and surveillance, launched a tool called Cover Your Tracks back in 2020. A successor to the well-known Panopticlick tool for measuring a browser’s performance at user privacy, the next-gen tool by EFF offers a more detailed (and easy to grasp) view of a browser’s fingerprint and tracking patterns. 

All you have to do is visit the Cover Your Tracks website, hit the test button, and your browser will be put to the test. The overarching idea is to give users an idea of how well (or properly) a browser protects users from being tracked and profiled as they surf the web. 

The tool essentially simulates tracking so that it can trigger a browser’s blocking systems using third-party requests. After running the test, it will tell you the amount of data collected by a browser, the level of protection it offers, and whether your data trails are unique. 

“Even if your privacy add-ons are working well, you may still be vulnerable if your browser fingerprint is unique. So we also analyze the uniqueness of your browser and let you know how it stacks up to other visitors we’ve observed recently,” explains the non-profit.

How do browsers fare? 

My current daily driver on the Mac is Perplexity’s Comet, but in my Windows system, I switch between Edge and Chrome. I also rely on Opera, primarily owing to its built-in VPN system and the fantastic collections feature for saving notes and other important information. 

For testing EFF’s Cover Your Tracks, I picked Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, Vivaldi, Dia, Comet, and Brave. The results were concerning and somewhat unsurprising at the same time. Take a look at the list below:

All the browsers built atop the Chromium engine collected 18.2 bits of data, the highest on the list, including Chrome. Apple’s Safari fared better by collecting 17.2 bits of data in regular mode, and 16.2 bits in incognito mode. The numbers match those of Vivaldi, a privacy-focused browser that comes with a built-in tracker and ad blocker. 

Additionally, running Safari without any add-ons suggests that my browser’s fingerprints are randomized, just like Brave. Every other browser that I tested told me that my browser fingerprints are unique in a certain pool of users tested within the past month or so. 

Overall, the EFF test concludes that Vivaldi offers “strong protection against web tracking,” while also blocking tracking ads and invisible trackers. Brave falls in the same category as Vivaldi, so you can make your privacy-first pick from there. Interestingly, the Dia and Comet browsers, which are built atop the Chromium engine, also delivered the same results as Brave and Vivaldi. 

Opera, despite using a VPN, falls in the red zone where it allowed tracking and didn’t serve any strong protection at all. Chrome also delivers the exact same results, while also giving a unique fingerprint to your web activity. Edge wasn’t too far off. 

Interestingly, Safari fared much better. “Although sophisticated adversaries may still be able to track you to some extent, randomization provides a very strong protection against tracking companies trying to fingerprint your browser,” says the tracker’s report, adding that the digital trails are randomized, instead of unique. 

Why must you stay vigilant?

Browsing the web is akin to leaving way more breadcrumbs and digital trails than you can possibly count on your fingers. And the landscape is only getting worse. Just a few months ago, the experts at Texas A&M University revealed that websites have now started to use fingerprinting techniques to track users as they surf the internet. 

Now, most of us think of cookies when the concept of activity tracking is discussed. However, the kind of activity tracking (or fingerprinting) documented by the researchers is something you can’t delete or block (unlike cookies). “ Most users have no idea it’s happening, and even privacy-focused browsers struggle to fully block it,” warned the team. 

The team developed a tool called FPTrace to sniff fingerprinting-based user tracking and discovered that even after users deleted cookies, their activity was tracked. Worryingly, even users who explicitly opted out of being tracked could still be fingerprinted. 

They surmised that the policies and privacy tools available to the masses are simply not enough. Furthermore, the research paper raises concerns about “widespread employment of browser fingerprinting.” 

Another paper published in the Journal of Forensic Science and Research tested Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge – both in public and private modes. After tracing artifacts and local data packet residues, the researchers found that Microsoft’s Edge browser fails its privacy claim and Chrome fares the best in terms of local privacy, but the protections offered by each browser vary in magnitude. 

In the case of Firefox, even after the database files created during a private session are deleted, researchers note that they can still be recovered using forensic tools. In regular browsing mode, even when users take precautions and delete their browsing history, the digital remnants are not fully erased, and they can still be recovered. 

So, what must you do?

So, what steps can you take? Well, let me break the bad news first. There is hardly any foolproof solution. “Completely blocking trackers is difficult, even with a fully-featured tracker blocker,” says EFF. But you can take a few measures to cut down on the footprint. 

You can start by installing a tracker blocker (though compatibility varies across browsers), disabling JavaScript (which can break some website features), and enabling the built-in protections available in your web browser. Of course, prefer incognito mode, as much as you can.

Privacy Badger and Ghostery are a couple of anti-tracking extensions, and you should give them a try. Also, cultivate a habit of clearing the browser cookies from time to time. Tor is the world’s most secure browser, as you can see from this in-depth PrivacyTests.org evaluation, but it doesn’t let a lot of websites load properly, so that’s a big caveat.

Another option is to use a VPN, and while at it, prefer a paid VPN. The free options out there are either shady, or too weak. To sum it all up, the threat landscape is continuously evolving, so it’s hard to shield yourself fully, but a few protective measures go a long way.