Cookie banners are theatre. They ask permission to store an ID.
But your browser hands the web enough detail to recognise you without storing anything โ
your GPU, your fonts, how your hardware renders a single line of text. That is a fingerprint.
What THE TRACE does
It runs a series of fingerprinting probes on your device, right now, and shows you each signal
in plain language as it arrives. Some succeed. Some your browser blocks or scrambles โ
and those blocks are shown with the same weight as the successes, because that is the real story:
privacy comes from a hardened browser, not from a consent pop-up.
What it stores
On this page, nothing. No cookie is set, no data leaves your browser,
the trace is discarded the moment you leave. If you want to watch a fingerprint decay over time
โ how it drifts and reforms across visits โ that lives behind the vault, and only ever
with an account you create on purpose.
The techniques
- Canvas & WebGL โ how your GPU renders
- Audio โ your sound stack's signature
- Fonts โ the set installed on your system
- Time โ timezone, clock resolution, drift
- Storage โ which vaults your browser exposes
- Motion โ inertial sensors, on handheld devices
An installation by Matteo Bononi, 2026 ยท MIT ยท a thesis with code, not a product.