In March 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined Verizon $1.35 million for tracking customers using the UIDH technology, also known as Supercookie. This was a major blow as the commission forced Verizon to allow customers to opt out of tracking. But what happened then and why was it considered a major setback for the website, and what is Supercookie? Why is it worse than regular cookies? We will find out in the following paragraphs of this article.
Firstly, what are Supercookies?
Supercookies, also known as ultra-cookies, are simply tracking cookies with more aggressive uses and different functions compared to regular cookies. Dealing with regular cookies is very common on the web, where you can manually or automatically delete browsing data and cookies after your browsing session ends on the browser. But with Supercookies, it’s a little different. Deleting browsing data does not help get rid of its traces as usual with cookies, and it’s not stored on your device either. Instead, the Internet service provider inserts a unique part of the user’s connection information within the HTTP standard to uniquely identify information on any device. In Verizon’s case, they allowed tracking of every website visited.
Since the Internet service provider (ISP) injects supercookies between the device and the server it connects to, the user can’t do anything about it. You can’t delete it because it’s not stored on your device, and ad blockers and scripts can’t stop it because it happens after the request leaves the device.
Read also: How to delete cookies on popular browsers
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