How identifiable is my browser?

Firefox Development
#1

I don’t mean this in the way treated at https://panopticlick.eff.org/
but specifically I just got an e-mail when signing up for discourse that said:

Click and confirm that you want to sign in to discourse.mozilla-community.org. Please sign in using the same web browser that you used to generate this link. The link will expire in five minutes.

Why do I need to use the same browser and how can you tell?

#2

Chances are the site set a cookie and will compare that cookie to some information in the URL you load. If so, what it really means is “the same cookies” or “the same browser profile”, not “the same browser”.

You could try testing that by using the same browser but in private browsing mode and seeing whether it works.

1 Like
#3

I’m too lazy to try but your answer is plausible! :slight_smile: