Your graphics card could decide on the displayed advertising in the future

Tracking users and selling their data plays a big role in Web 2.0. There is hardly a website that does not welcome us with a consent management platform and would like to obtain our consent to as much data processing as possible, after all, the creators of content also want to earn money from their work. But that will change soon.

Because with the warfare that many browser manufacturers have started against third-party cookies, it will be more difficult for advertising companies to track a user across different websites in the future, and new concepts are currently being discussed controversially in the industry. Besides incorporating people into interest groups, researchers may have found another interesting way.

In the future, fingerprinting, i.e. assigning unique characteristics to a user, could be done via the computer’s graphics card. Because almost every computer has its own digital profile based on its equipment, installed programs and software versions. Advertising companies could use this specifically against the user in the future.

This is based on the time it takes a graphics processor to display certain visual elements on a web page. It is made possible by WebGL, an API that renders graphics and is used in the most common browsers. The required period of time varies depending on the end device, a person could be identified using this code.

The researchers say that the duration over which a user can be tracked could increase by up to 67 percent in this way. An algorithm would only have to be fed with the data obtained and would then assign a unique signature to each participant.

The new tracking method was tested on 2,550 devices with 1,605 different CPU configurations. It turned out that the technology can be used on both desktop PCs and mobile devices. Access to sensors, the Internet connection or other information is not necessary. This also cleverly avoids the consent of the user.

Via gizmodo