We live in a time where surveillance is the default. Ever heard the phrase: “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”? Well, it’s not just a catchy line, it’s the foundation of the internet today. Your data is the currency companies use to fund free services, and they’ll track you by any means necessary to get it.
Some people assume online privacy is just about hiding their IP address. “I’ll use a VPN and a burner email—problem solved!” But that’s not how it works. Your IP address is just one of many ways websites and advertisers track you, and honestly, it’s probably the least important. Even if you mask it, your digital fingerprint remains, and it’s so unique that it can recognize you with 90% accuracy, without cookies, without an account, and without an IP address.
The Real Tracking Game
Every time you browse the web, sites collect a huge amount of data about you:
- Browser type and version
- Operating system and screen resolution
- Installed fonts, plugins, and extensions (Yes, AdBlock and Grammarly are snitching.)
- CPU and GPU models
- Battery status (Are you on 5% and rushing to find a charger?)
- Accelerometer and gyroscope data (on mobile, they even track how you hold your phone.)
Put all of this together, and websites can create a profile so distinct that they don’t need cookies or login credentials to recognize you. And it doesn’t stop there—your behavioral patterns (how you type, how you move your mouse, how fast you scroll) add yet another layer of unique tracking.
The Problem with Supercookies
Most people worry about cookies, but the real concern? Supercookies.
Unlike regular cookies, these:
- Are stored at the ISP level, meaning they persist even if you clear your browser.
- Can’t be deleted like normal cookies.
- Allow tracking even if you block all browser-based tracking methods.
- Work alongside DNS requests, WebRTC leaks, and packet metadata to uniquely identify you.
VPNs Are Not the Silver Bullet
The VPN industry thrives on marketing a dream: “Buy our service and become invisible!” Reality? Not quite.
- VPNs only hide your IP, they don’t stop fingerprinting or behavioral tracking.
- Some VPNs log your activity anyway, meaning you’ve just moved your trust from your ISP to a VPN provider.
- VPNs don’t protect against DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, or metadata tracking.
- Many VPN companies are owned by the same data broker firms that profit from online tracking.
Think about it: What’s stopping a VPN provider from selling your data just like your ISP does? At best, a VPN gives you compartmentalization, meaning your ISP sees less, but you’re still leaving a digital trail.
The Bigger Picture: Connectivity and Privacy
The modern internet isn’t built with privacy in mind, it’s built for data collection. The way we connect to the web, whether through home broadband, mobile networks, or Wi-Fi hotspots, feeds data into massive surveillance systems. This is why privacy focus connectivity models, like the one being built by World Mobile, are interesting. Imagine an internet where access isn’t monopolized by massive ISPs, and users have more control over their data instead of it being harvested and sold.
While solutions like VPNs and privacy browsers help minimize exposure, they’re not foolproof. The only real way to protect yourself is to change how the internet itself operates, but until that happens, your best bet is limiting what you give away.
===> What You Can Actually Do
If you can’t be invisible, the next best thing is making tracking you as inconvenient as possible:
- Use privacy-focused browsers (Mullvad Browser, Librewolf, or hardened Firefox setups).
- Disable JavaScript whenever possible to block fingerprinting.
- Rotate VPN servers frequently (but don’t rely on them for full privacy).
- Use self-hosted services or decentralized networks to reduce reliance on Big Tech.
- Turn off tracking features on your devices (mobile sensors, telemetry, and cloud services where possible).
- Try with anti-fingerprinting techniques like spoofing system details or using sandboxes.
The Reality Check
Even with all these steps, perfect privacy doesn’t exist. The level of tracking today is so advanced that going off-grid is almost the only real way to avoid it. But for most people, the goal isn’t complete invisibility, it’s reducing exposure to limit how much of their life is monetized without consent.
So no, a VPN and a burner email won’t make you a ghost online. But with enough layers of obfuscation, you can at least make it harder for the system to track you effortlessly, and that alone is worth doing.