Uncovering Canvas Fingerprinting in Real-Time and Analyzing ist Usage for Web-Tracking

Abstract

Since the beginnings of the World Wide Web, advertisements are an inherent part of it. It enables business models that allow users to consume content and services free of charge, while their providers generate revenue with every visitor. These advertisements are specifically tailored to each user to increase the probability that a user actually clicks on them. However, in order to personalize these advertisements, tracking techniques are used to generate profiles for every visitor. Canvas fingerprinting is a modern technique to identify users across multiple websites. Since the generation of such fingerprints takes place completely absent from the users’ attention, this paper presents a browser extension to uncover these fingerprints in real-time. Furthermore, an analysis of today’s usage of canvas fingerprinting is conducted to evaluate the role of it in Web tracking practices. We found that canvas fingerprinting is hardly used for Web tracking, while simultaneously learning that it is applied in the field of cyber security.