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
The probe results stay in your browser and are discarded when you leave.
The site stores your cookie preferences. If you accept analytics, Google Analytics measures
page visits and the start and completion of this experience; it never receives your fingerprint or probe results. 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.