Which statement describes a privacy risk of device fingerprinting?

• A. It can be used to track a user across websites without cookies.
• B. It eliminates all forms of online tracking.
• C. It makes it impossible to identify a device.
• D. It prevents data breaches by sandboxing data.

Answer: (A)

Device fingerprinting gathers a set of attributes exposed by the browser and device—such as browser version, fonts, screen resolution, time zone, language, plugins, and subtle timing signals. When combined, these attributes create a unique or highly distinctive signature that can be observed by any site you visit. Because this signature can persist across sites, it enables tracking you across the web even if cookies are blocked or cleared. That persistence is the privacy risk: you can be identified or re-identified across different sites and build profiles without explicit consent, and fingerprinting methods are often hard to fully block. It’s not about eliminating tracking, it doesn’t guarantee device identification is impossible, and it has no relation to preventing data breaches through sandboxing.