Thanks, this is a really useful reply. With regard to identifying privacy-focused users in your system, I'm sort of imagining the following scenario:

- user has a bunch of privacy mitigations and tweaks in their browser

- user logs into your commerce site, searches for stuff to buy

- commerce site knows who the user is since they're logged in, and per your comment can infer whether or not they're wealthy, have kids, etc. based on the user activity and whether or not the user is likely have an expensive screen & GPU, etc.

Does that sound right? That's really interesting, and something I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't really thought of. In other words, I've spent a lot of time worrying about cross-site tracking, and advertising domains, etc. However, if I'm purchasing from Amazon they know it's me since I'm just shipping to my own house. Even in a scenario where my browser is magically un-fingerprint-able, it's obviously me since I'm using my account and shipping to my house.

In other words, I may potentially have prevented a bunch of cross-site tracking and fingerprinting. Perhaps when I go to washingtonpost.com they don't know I'm the same person that Amazon knows about. (that might be a best case scenario) However, by virtue of the fact that my privacy config is operating all the time, Amazon has also learned something about me I didn't necessarily need to tell them -- ie, that I'm privacy-focused.

Do you think that's a fair assessment, or am I missing the point?

> Amazon has also learned something about me I didn't necessarily need to tell them -- ie, that I'm privacy-focused.

Exactly, and it turns out privacy-focused people tend to be relatively self-similar in many ways and, at least back in the day, were easier to advertise to.

Now, Amazon (or whomever) still doesn't know your name, but they are still targeting you and, what I found super interesting, is the fact that it was often more effective targeting than if the person was just part of the bulk of the population. It's kinda like if the system observed all the nonconformist teens like to wear Doc Marten's.