From the largest organized crime syndicates to your average opportunistic thief, fraudsters come in all shapes and sizes. But one thing they all have in common: attempting to hide their identity online. And that’s where fingerprinting can be a useful tool for businesses.
Reduce fraud with device fingerprinting is pretty straightforward: it collects and compares data points from a user’s browser or app to identify their unique characteristics. It may include things like screen resolution, CPU information, and software specifics (operating system version, browser extensions), among other elements. This data is then normalized and compared to a database of known device fingerprints to determine whether an incoming device has been seen before or not.
Reduce Fraud with Device Fingerprinting: A Smart Security Measure
However, fraudsters are getting smarter and employing tactics to manipulate or disguise these characteristics, undermining the effectiveness of device fingerprinting. This can occur through spoofing the user agent, switching devices frequently, using privacy-focused platforms, or by taking advantage of bot and automation tools and virtual machine environments.
Despite these challenges, fingerprinting can provide a powerful set of tools to help businesses protect themselves from fraudsters and other bad actors. It can also provide valuable insight into customers’ device and browser use patterns and overall browsing behavior. For example, device fingerprinting can help detect anomalies in the rate or velocity of a person’s actions, a key indicator of suspicious activity that can be relayed to fraud teams quickly and accurately.