How do real-world tests (panopticlick, AmIUnique, browserleaks) rate DuckDuckGo versus Brave and Startpage for fingerprint uniqueness?
Executive summary
Real-world fingerprinting testers (EFF’s Cover Your Tracks / Panopticlick, AmIUnique, BrowserLeaks and similar tools) are widely used to compare how “trackable” browsers look; reporting and reviews consistently show Brave implementing active fingerprint randomization or strong anti-fingerprinting measures while DuckDuckGo’s mobile/overlay browser offers more limited protections and Startpage is primarily a search provider rather than a full browser (Brave stood out in PCMag testing as the only browser that the EFF tool called “randomized”) [1]. The testing sites themselves measure different signals and have sampling biases, so a “good” result on Panopticlick/AmIUnique/BrowserLeaks is useful but not a definitive measure of real-world trackability [2] [3].
1. How the testers work — different tools, different emphases
Panopticlick/Cover Your Tracks, AmIUnique and BrowserLeaks all collect technical signals (User-Agent, canvas/WebGL, fonts, audio, headers, WebRTC, etc.) to compute uniqueness or leak surfaces, but they vary in which signals they test and how they compute “uniqueness”; AmIUnique emphasizes WebGL and provides synthetic unicity statistics, EFF’s Cover Your Tracks focuses on how trackers see your browser, and BrowserLeaks dives into many leak vectors like canvas rendering and WebRTC [4] [5] [6]. Analysts warn these tools expose “surface-level” data useful for education and auditing but not a full picture of adversary capabilities [2].
2. What tests and reviews report about Brave
Multiple reviews and comparisons note Brave’s built‑in fingerprint protections and that in at least one hands‑on of EFF’s tool, Brave produced a randomized fingerprint — PCMag’s brief tests highlighted Brave as the only browser that the EFF tool reported as randomized [1]. Industry and review pieces repeatedly credit Brave with strong default shields that block trackers, ads and fingerprinting [7] [8]. That consistent reporting across vendor and third‑party writeups places Brave near the top on these publicly available tests [1] [7] [8].
3. What tests and reviews report about DuckDuckGo (browser) and Startpage
DuckDuckGo’s offerings are described as providing “limited” fingerprint protections compared with Brave: DuckDuckGo blocks some trackers and intrusive ads and offers fingerprint protections on top of a WebView-based overlay on some platforms, but reviewers note it doesn’t generally randomize fingerprint attributes the way Brave does and relies more on blocking lists than active spoofing/randomization [9] [1]. Startpage, in the provided sources, appears as a private search engine rather than a browser product and is recommended as a search alternative to reduce stored search history rather than as a fingerprint-defeating browser; specific browser fingerprinting scores for Startpage are not discussed in the supplied reporting (available sources do not mention Startpage’s browser fingerprint test results).
4. Limits and biases of the tests — why results aren’t the whole story
Researchers and explainers emphasize sampling and bias issues: datasets behind Panopticlick, AmIUnique and academic studies are skewed (for example, Panopticlick’s user base skews toward privacy‑conscious users), different sites collect different attributes, and fingerprint uniqueness in a test sample does not equal an absolute real‑world tracking capability [3] [10]. A blog analysis and privacy guides explicitly warn that these tester sites are educational and surface‑level — they may miss how ad systems or large trackers correlate signals across sites — so test pass/fail labels should be interpreted cautiously [2] [11].
5. What a single “randomized” EFF result means (and doesn’t)
PCMag’s note that Brave was the only browser in their brief run for which the EFF tool reported a randomized fingerprint is a strong indicator that Brave’s anti‑fingerprinting approach alters signals in a way that the EFF heuristic treats as non‑unique [1]. But that single observation is from brief testing and the EFF/AmIUnique frameworks are only proxies for what commercial trackers do; academic work stresses that tracking at scale can combine many signals and cross‑site behavior in ways test pages don’t replicate [1] [3] [2].
6. Practical takeaway for users evaluating these tests
Use these testers to learn what attributes your browser exposes and to compare browsers in your own environment, but don’t treat one tool’s “unique” or “randomized” label as definitive. Brave’s built‑in shields have repeatedly earned strong marks in reviews and produced favorable results on EFF’s test in PCMag’s checks, while DuckDuckGo’s browser offers lighter, blocking‑based protections that often perform worse on fingerprint randomization in review snapshots [1] [9]. For Startpage, the sources discuss search‑privacy benefits but do not provide fingerprinting test outcomes for a Startpage browser (available sources do not mention Startpage fingerprint test results).
Sources cited in this note: PCMag testing and reviews (Brave randomized on EFF tool) [1]; Brave and DuckDuckGo feature comparisons and vendor claims [9] [7] [8]; tool descriptions and limitations from EFF, AmIUnique, BrowserLeaks and commentary on what testers show and miss [4] [5] [6] [2] [3].