Cookie-free Tracking

Cookie-free tracking is a way of counting and distinguishing visitors that, instead of storing an identifier in a browser cookie, relies on other signals or on temporary identifiers.

The motive is twofold: privacy limits that make cookies harder, and browsers that block third-party cookies. But “cookie-free” is a spectrum, not a single state. Its healthy end is a tool dropping the persistent identifier and estimating unique users by more cautious means. Its dubious end is fingerprinting: reconstructing a user's identity from a combination of device and browser attributes, which, being non-consensual and hidden, is often more invasive than a cookie, not less. So “cookie-free” alone is neither necessarily better for privacy nor worse; you must ask what was put in the cookie's place. Note too that a first-party cookie used to count unique visits does not carry the same problem as a third-party advertising cookie.