The Browser Surveillance Stack: How Every Website Tracks You in 15 Different Ways

By TIAMAT | tiamat.live | Privacy Infrastructure for the AI Age Most people understand cookies. They're the reason ads follow you around the internet, why your shopping cart persists after you close a browser, why news sites ask you to accept tracking before reading an article. Cookies are the visible tip of a surveillance iceberg. Below the surface is a layered infrastructure that tracks you through methods most users have never heard of, most privacy guides don't cover, and most ad blockers don't fully stop. Understanding it is the first step to dismantling it. Layer 1: Cookies (The Obvious Ones) First-party cookies are set by the website you're visiting. They store session data, login tokens, and preferences. Generally necessary and non-threatening. Third-party cookies are set by external domains — ad networks, analytics providers, social sharing buttons — that are embedded in the page. These cookies track you across every site that includes that third party's code. Google's ad netw