Does Matomo use a fingerprint and how is it processed?

Matomo does not use a fingerprint to track visitors.

Instead of a fingerprint, Matomo uses the most privacy-friendly industry-leading measures to protect users privacy instead of fingerprinting: the config_id is used by Matomo to group different actions into « visits » during a short window of up to 24-hours.

The visitor config_id is a randomly-seeded, privacy-enabled, time-limited hash of a limited set of the visitor’s settings and attributes. The config_id or config hash is a string calculated for a visitor based on their operating system, browser, browser plugins, IP address and browser language. Unlike other tools that use fingerprinting, Matomo does not do fingerprint, and the config_id is only valid for less than 24 hours and only valid for one particular website domain:

• the config_id is only valid for 24 hours maximum and is then rotated, meaning the same visitor will have a different config_id each day.
• The config_id randomly changes and is fully anonymised every 24 hours. The randomly-generated seed is discarded each day and cannot be recovered.
• the website ID is used to process the config_id which means that on your Matomo (Piwik) instance, a given user/visitor will always have a different config_id when browsing your different websites and domains.
• the IP address used to create the config_id will be the anonymised IP address when you have enabled IP anonymisation which is the default privacy setting in Matomo (when you select « Also use anonymised IP when enriching visit: No » then the full IP address will be used in the hash calculation).

Learn more how does Matomo detect unique and returning visitors with User ID, Visitor ID from cookie.