Evercookie
Evercookies are utilized to monitor your web activities, even after you've deleted the cookies from your browser. This raises significant privacy issues, as it allows websites to persistently gather information about you without your awareness or consent.
What is Evercookie?
An Evercookie refers to a form of long-lasting tracking technology. It is particularly challenging to eliminate from your web browser. In contrast to regular cookies, which can be easily removed through your browser settings, an Evercookie is engineered to recreate itself. If you eliminate it from one area, it will leverage data found in other locations on your device to reappear. Due to this characteristic, it is often referred to as a "zombie cookie."
Key Features of Evercookies
- Self-Regenerating: Its most notable feature is its capability to "respawn" or reestablish itself after being deleted. As long as a single copy of its data remains in any of its storage sites, it can restore all other deleted instances.
- Difficult to Remove: Since it keeps data in numerous and less obvious locations, typical "clear cookies" options in browsers frequently fail to eliminate it.
- Cross-Browser Tracking: Certain storage methods utilized by Evercookies, such as Flash Local Shared Objects, can be accessed across different browsers on the same machine. This means it can track your behavior even if you switch between browsers.
- Bypasses Privacy Controls: Privacy tools like the incognito or private modes of browsers do not impede an Evercookie, as it employs storage techniques that endure even within these modes.
Use Cases of Evercookies
- Fraud Detection: Evercookies can help track users engaged in fraudulent activities, such as creating numerous accounts or utilizing stolen credit cards.
- Personalization: Evercookies can store a user's preferences, including their language choice or contents of their shopping cart.
- Analytics: Evercookies facilitate the tracking of user interactions on a website, aiding website owners in making improvements to their platform.