Researchers use GPU fingerprinting to track users online

LASER_oneXM

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Feb 4, 2016
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A team of researchers from French, Israeli, and Australian universities has explored the possibility of using people's GPUs to create unique fingerprints and use them for persistent web tracking.
The results of their large-scale experiment involving 2,550 devices with 1,605 distinct CPU configurations show that their technique, named 'DrawnApart,' can boost the median tracking duration to 67% compared to current state-of-the-art methods.

This is a severe problem for user privacy, which is currently protected by laws that focus on acquiring consent to activate website cookies.

These laws have led unscrupulous websites to collect other potential fingerprinting elements such as the hardware configuration, OS, timezones, screen resolution, language, fonts, etc.
This unethical approach is still limited because these elements change frequently, and even when they're stable, they can only put users into a rough categorization rather than create a unique fingerprint.
 

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