Glossary
What is browser fingerprinting?
Browser fingerprinting identifies a visitor from the combination of characteristics their browser exposes — screen size, fonts, timezone, graphics rendering, extensions — which together are often unique enough to recognise the same person across sessions with no cookie and no account involved.
Why it defeats the usual precautions
Clearing cookies does nothing: the fingerprint is computed fresh each visit from properties you cannot easily change.
Private browsing does nothing either, for the same reason — the window is new, the machine is not.
A VPN changes your apparent location while leaving the fingerprint identical, which can make you more distinctive rather than less.
Why it matters more for AI chat than for most sites
A fingerprint on a shopping site links your product views. A fingerprint on an AI chat links the questions you asked when you believed nobody was counting — which is a far more revealing set, and the exact thing a no-account service is supposed to prevent.
This is why "no account" alone is not a complete claim. A service can require no sign-up and still recognise returning visitors by fingerprint, which reconstructs the profile it promised not to build.
The only real defence is a service that does not collect these signals. nokeep does not fingerprint visitors: rate limiting works from the request itself and is discarded, and there is no per-visitor record anywhere in the system to attach a fingerprint to even if one were computed.
Asked before you asked
Can I stop browser fingerprinting?
Only partly. Tor Browser and hardened configurations reduce distinctiveness by making many users look alike; most anti-tracking extensions make you more unusual rather than less.
Is fingerprinting legal?
It is regulated rather than banned. Under GDPR and ePrivacy it generally requires consent, which is why so many consent banners exist — and why the safer design is not collecting it at all.
How do I know if a service fingerprints me?
You mostly cannot from the outside, which is why it belongs in the privacy policy. A service that says nothing about it has not told you either way.