When you think of Browser Fingerprinting Fraud Prevention, your mind may jump to the technology used by police detectives to find criminal suspects. Similarly, fingerprinting is a digital identification technique that allows websites to recognize visitors based on the unique characteristics of their devices and browsers. This information is gathered using fingerprinting scripts, which are invisible to users and hidden among the many other scripts required to make a website function. The scripts gather a wide range of data points, known as signals, to build the fingerprint. This fingerprint can be matched against previous records to identify returning visitors, even if they have switched devices, visited other sites, or used incognito browsing or a VPN.

Preventing Browser Fingerprinting Fraud: Browser Fingerprinting Fraud Prevention

The advantages of fingerprinting include the ability to identify visitors, offer them personalized content, and improve user experience (UX). McKinsey research shows 71% of customers expect companies to tailor experiences to their preferences. Fingerprinting enables this by accurately identifying visitors even if they’re not logged in, use incognito mode, or clear cookies.

Another use case for fingerprinting is in security, where it can be used to prevent fraud and account takeover. For example, it’s possible to require two-factor or email authentication when a visitor has a bad fingerprint. This can be set up through the Workflow and Lists features in the Persona dashboard. The fingerprint can also be added to a blocklist, which will flag this visitor for future login attempts.