Browser and device traits as an identifier

Clearing cookies feels like starting over, and for cookie-based tracking it is. It does nothing for a different kind of recognition, built from the properties your browser exposes just by loading a page: screen resolution, installed fonts, timezone, GPU details, the exact set and order of browser extensions, and dozens of smaller settings. Combined, that set of values is often unique enough to single out one browser among millions, without a cookie anywhere in the process.

How the fingerprint gets built

None of the individual values is rare on its own. Plenty of people run the same screen resolution, the same timezone, the same browser version. The fingerprint's power comes from the combination: research from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Panopticlick project, and its successor Cover Your Tracks, has repeatedly found that most browsers tested present a combination unique or near-unique among the sample, purely from passive characteristics a page can read without asking permission.

A site does not need to ask for any of this. Javascript running on the page can query most of it directly, and the query looks the same as any other page function to anything watching the connection - there is no separate consent prompt the way there is, at least nominally, for cookies in many jurisdictions.

Why this matters for an upload site specifically

The practical consequence for a rating tool is that "I didn't make an account and I cleared my cookies between visits" does not mean the two visits are unlinkable from the server's side. If the fingerprint matches, the service can associate the second upload with the first even though neither visit carried an identifying cookie or login. Whether it does associate them is a policy choice, not a technical inevitability - fingerprinting capability and fingerprinting practice are different things, and only the policy tells you which a given site does.

An IP address adds another linking signal on top of this, and the two together narrow things down more than either alone, since a matching fingerprint from a matching IP range is a stronger link than either fact by itself. Browsers have started pushing back: newer versions randomise some fingerprintable values and some ad blockers spoof others, but the arms race favours whoever wants to build the fingerprint, since a defender has to block every signal and an attacker only needs a few that survive.

Canvas and audio fingerprinting go further than settings

Beyond passively readable settings, some scripts actively probe the browser to generate a fingerprint rather than just reading one. A canvas fingerprint asks the browser to render a hidden shape or piece of text and reads back the resulting pixels; because font rendering, GPU drivers and anti-aliasing differ slightly across devices, the output image differs slightly too, in a way that is stable for a given machine and near-unique across many. An audio fingerprint does the same thing with a sound the browser is asked to synthesise, reading back subtle differences in how the audio stack processes it. Neither produces anything a person would call an image or a sound; both produce a short signature that behaves exactly like a passively collected one once it exists.

What actually reduces exposure

Using a privacy-focused browser mode, or a browser built around resisting fingerprinting, changes more values than clearing cookies does, though it is not a guarantee. The more durable point is behavioural: fingerprinting only links two visits to the same session, and it does nothing to connect that session to your identity unless something else does - a payment, an account, an email address you also used elsewhere. The email you sign in with is usually the identifier doing the real work, and fingerprinting without that link is anonymous tracking rather than identified tracking, a real distinction even if it is a smaller comfort than "clear cookies and you're untraceable."

Rate Cock does not need a fingerprint to serve a result, since a session token covers what the interface requires, and what a policy says about fingerprinting specifically is worth checking rather than assuming from that. Measurement tools face the same question from a different angle; Measure My Cock's data practices cover what a method-based service tracks across a session. For how a human reviewer's process differs, since it never depends on browser tracking at all, Rate Penis's coverage of the judged review is the relevant comparison. Penis Rater's guide to evaluating a tool is a reasonable place to weigh a fingerprinting practice against everything else that goes into choosing where to upload.