Your browser is snitching on you

June 23, 2025

By Kim Komando

You’ve heard me say it a hundred times: Clear your cookies, block third-party trackers, use private browsing. But here’s something new, something creepier. 

Now, even after nuking cookies from orbit and going full incognito ninja, websites still know who you are. How? Something called browser fingerprinting. 

And unlike actual crime-fighting fingerprints, this one just helps companies charge you more for socks.

🚰 How it works

Every time you visit a website, your browser leaks little clues about who you are: your screen size, time zone, where you live, your device and operating system, even how fast your processor runs. 

None of these sounds personal, but when combined? They create a unique invisible fingerprint that websites use to identify you.

A new study from Texas A&M and Johns Hopkins shows this is no longer a fringe trick, it’s mainstream. 

👣 Tracks in real time

Websites now know who you are even if you’re not logged in, cleared your cookies and browse in incognito mode. Researchers watched sites change in real time depending on the fingerprint they detected. 

Here’s the kicker: Your “harmless” device fingerprint is used to change the prices you see. Researchers watched websites adjust pricing in real time based on things I’ve mentioned.

In other words, you could see higher prices simply because you live in an expensive area or use a newer iPhone. Creepy? Totally. Legal? For now, yes.

✋ So what can you do?

You can’t “turn off” fingerprinting. It’s baked into the way the web works. Privacy tools like uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger help, and so do browsers like Brave and Tor. But they’re not enough.

You need to go one level deeper.

🛡️ You need a VPN

A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. It masks your real IP address and location, routing your traffic through a secure server, often in another city or country.

This does two things fingerprinting tools can’t handle:

1. It breaks the link between your fingerprint and your identity. Even if your browser leaks traits, they can’t be tied to you.
2. It introduces just enough uncertainty to mess with the tracking systems. You become very difficult to profile and follow.

A VPN is the only reliable defense against this kind of tracking. Every other tool helps a little, but a VPN changes the game entirely. I use ExpressVPN*, and I’m picky. It’s fast, secure, easy to use, and unlike free VPNs, it doesn’t log your activity or sell your data.

Whether you’re at home, at work or on public Wi-Fi, ExpressVPN hides your IP address, encrypts your connection and keeps fingerprinting tools from tying your activity to your identity. If you’re serious about privacy, this is the one tool you don’t want to skip.

👉 Get four months free at expressvpn.com/kim and take back control of digital life now.