Tracking Without Traces - Fingerprinting in an Era of Individualism and Complexity

Fingerprinting is a ready-to-use technology that exploits the diversity and complexity of today’s personal computing devices. Since fingerprinting leaves little to no trace, Do Not Track (DNT) policies are hard to enforce. The upcoming ePrivacy Regulation must consider this technological reality. In this opinion paper, we analyse technical use cases for device fingerprinting as an easy-to-deploy and hard-to-detect tracking technology. The EU has a longstanding tradition in strong data protection norms. To keep this high standards, we call on to the legislator to act, and illustrate vital points that must be considered in the legislative process.