What is font fingerprint? How does BitBrowser simulate real font fingerprint?
Font fingerprinting is a technique used by websites to collect information about the fonts installed on your device. It is also a type of browser fingerprinting. In order to avoid font fingerprinting from leaking your identity information, BitBrowser can also perform browser font fingerprinting disguise. This article will analyze what font fingerprinting is? How does BitBrowser simulate real font fingerprinting?
What is font fingerprinting?
Font fingerprinting is an advanced online tracking technology that exploits the unique set of fonts installed on the user's device. It is a type of device fingerprinting, similar to WebGL or Canvas fingerprinting, but it does not rely on graphics rendering or web page elements, but focuses on available fonts and how browsers render them. Websites use this technology to collect information about devices, and in turn about users, without explicit consent or the use of traditional tracking methods such as cookies.
How does BitBrowser simulate real font fingerprinting?
Text rendering is a subtle and complex part of web browsers. Even in Latin letters, layout is more than just stacking boxes together: considerations such as ligatures, kerning, and combining characters all come into play. Some other writing systems are even more complex, causing browsers to rely on OS-provided libraries for text layout. These libraries, including Pango on GNU/Linux, Graphics Device Interface (GDI) or DirectWrite on Windows, and Core Text on Mac OS X, are independent code bases and behave differently. Browsers also impose their own customizations on top of basic text rendering.
BitBrowser can generate font fingerprints based on the system or match font fingerprints randomly. Each window creates an independent sandbox environment to store exclusive font configuration data. When a user operates multiple accounts at the same time, the browser environment corresponding to each account will present a completely different combination of font fingerprints.