20% of Japan consumer sites secretly track web users: Nikkei survey

Forget cookies, device fingerprinting offers more subtle way to watch

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Device tracking is more difficult to detect than cookies or other methods. © Getty Images

RIHO NAGAO, Nikkei staff writer

TOKYO -- While internet users have become used to accepting or denying cookies when they log on to a website, device fingerprinting has developed into the latest hot-button issue over online privacy and has exposed the scant regulation in Japan surrounding keeping people's information private.

A lesser-known workaround to cookies, which users can accept or deny, device fingerprinting tracks a person's online movements. And according to a recent Nikkei survey, more than a fifth of Japanese businesses use this workaround to track site users without their knowledge.

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