[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Track Users Without Fingerprinting
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       Ask HN: Track Users Without Fingerprinting
        
       I want to be able to give users a 3 day trial period to use my
       product (a React + Node.js web app) without a sign-up. Seems that
       the best option online is fingerprint.com and I've learned the hard
       way that the free npm version is only 60% accurate.  My other
       option is to save a uuid on the browser's local storage to track
       the user. This wont work if the user erased their history.  I'd
       like to pause and ask the community - Is there a fundamentally
       better way to do an x-day free trial?
        
       Author : tndibona
       Score  : 5 points
       Date   : 2023-10-07 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
       | mtmail wrote:
       | We do signup, including captcha, email confirmation step, record
       | IP addresses, extensive check against temporary/burner/disposable
       | email addresses. Still 10 people per day sign up multiple times.
       | If people want to go over the trial period they will. Literally
       | while I was writing this I got a notification of a repeat signup
       | and sure enough the user hit their quota and just signed up with
       | another email address to continue. That's the reason you see
       | websites requiring phone number or credit card verification these
       | days.
        
         | tndibona wrote:
         | How in the world does new york times keep track of how many
         | articles you've read before slapping the paywall? It seems to
         | work even if you switch to private mode or use a different
         | browser from the same machine.
        
           | mtmail wrote:
           | I thought they do it by HTTP referrer. Paywall by default but
           | if you came from e.g. a Google result page it's lifted.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-07 23:01 UTC)