Google has announced to organisations that use its advertising products, that from 16.2.2025, it will no longer prohibit them from employing "fingerprinting" techniques to identify users (as distinct from traditional technologies used for user identification / tracking such as cookies etc) .
Examples of the information elements that fingerprinting techniques can use:
- data derived from the device's / browser's configuration
- data exposed by the use of particular network protocols
- installed plugins within a browser
UK law states that this requires user consent: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-privacy-and-electronic-communications/guidance-on-the-use-of-storage-and-access-technologies/what-are-storage-and-access-technologies/#device_fingerprinting
According to Computer Active magazine, the best way to prevent being "fingerprinted" is to use the Tor Browser with its "letterboxing" feature. "Letterboxing" is a Tor feature that conceals a user's "real" browser window size from websites. It does this by adding margins to the browser window(s) to help prevent "fingerprinting" users based on their window / screen size:
https://support.torproject.org/glossary/letterboxing/