Have you ever heard of browser fingerprinting? you should! It is an online user identification technology that collects information about the visitor’s web browser and its configuration preferences in order to associate an individual browsing session with a single website visitor.
With browser fingerprinting, several pieces of data may be collected about a user’s web browser and device, such as screen resolution, location, language, and operating system. When you put these pieces together, they reveal a unique combination of information that makes up each user’s visitor ID or “digital fingerprint”. Websites may use Visitor ID in a variety of ways, including to personalize the user experience, improve fraud detection, and optimize login security.
This article discusses the issue of browser fingerprinting and how to use it securely on your website.
Personalizing the user experience
Providing users with a seamless, optimized website experience helps reduce bounce rates, improve conversion rates, and increase sales and revenue. Browser fingerprinting identifies each user with a unique visitor ID associated with their sessions, even if they are days or weeks apart. Therefore, when a User visits a Website, the Website may use the unique Visitor ID to customize the Website’s content for that specific returning User.
For example, let’s say a user visits once and adds several items to their shopping cart. In that case, the website remembers the item the next time the user visits, and may even offer a limited-time promotional code to reduce the likelihood of shopping cart abandonment.
Here are some more examples of how you can use browser and device fingerprinting for personalization:
Remember user’s dark or light mode browser preferences
It is well documented that visitors who use “dark mode” prefer it to prevent eye strain and keep them on the website longer than those who use light or standard mode . Are. Typically, a visitor’s site preferences are stored in session or local storage, which does not persist between browsing modes (standard and incognito). With browser fingerprinting, websites can detect visitor preferences and automatically provide the right light or dark mode.
Stored Shopping Cart
Identifying items that are consistently in a visitor’s shopping cart can reduce the loss of sales from shopping cart abandonment. Remembering a shopping cart over days to weeks can also reduce checkout times for returning visitors, who use the same visitor ID with a visitor ID to aggregate all stored items in the cart.
Saving shopping and browsing history
Saving product purchase and browsing history can help increase sales from returning visitors by streamlining repurchases or accessing past searches. Typical cookie-based solutions become ineffective when a visitor switches from normal to private browsing mode (or vice versa). Browser fingerprinting can associate previously ordered and viewed items with visitor ID and display them upon the visitor’s subsequent return to help simplify the online shopping experience.
E-Commerce promotion
Running an ecommerce promotion without user verification is prone to abuse. The traditional method of preventing this type of abuse requires signing up for a marketing list via email or phone number. Luckily, we can streamline this process without adding extra steps for visitors.
A stable and unique identifier is excellent for assigning promotions to unknown visitors and preventing abuse of duplicate promotions. In addition, promotions can be applied specifically based on specific visiting behavior, such as rewarding visitors with free shipping after a certain number of visits to a particular page of the site.
Improve fraud detection
Browser fingerprinting can also help websites improve their fraud detection strategies. For example, suppose a visitor tries to access a website from a device with a different visitor ID than their normal visitor ID. In that case, the website may prompt users to verify their identity. Adding checkpoints helps prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and reduces the risk of fraud such as account takeover and payment fraud.
Here are some other ways highly accurate browser fingerprinting can help a website prevent some of the most common (and costly) types of online fraud:
Payment fraud
Payment fraud is a serious issue for businesses that store, handle or process payment information, such as ecommerce websites. By processing stolen credit card details, fraudsters can take advantage of your business for money laundering operations or unauthorized goods/services that will create chargebacks.
A chargeback occurs when a merchant has to return payment for an unauthorized transaction and sometimes incurs a fee. Stolen credit card information or fraudulent chargebacks cost both consumers and businesses revenue year after year.
Identifying these fraudulent purchases before they become chargebacks is critical for businesses to save themselves and their customers time and money.
Account sharing prevention
Account sharing has been in the news more than usual due to companies like Netflix cracking down on users who share their account information with friends and family members instead of paying for their accounts. share with. If you’ve had account sharing issues, you probably don’t know how big of a problem it really is.
With Fingerprint’s account sharing prevention capabilities, we help you reduce account sharing and increase your overall subscription revenue by accurately identifying unique visitors for each account.
Credential stuffing
Credential stuffing is the automated use of usernames and passwords obtained through coordinated hacking methods by fraudsters or hackers who purchase pre-obtained logins from the dark web.
Preventing credential stuffing is crucial to providing users with a safe, secure, and reliable login experience.
Let’s dive deeper into login security to help you better understand how browser fingerprinting can help you optimize your login security.
Customizing Login Security
It is necessary to accurately identify users when logging in to any software or website that requires users to use an account with its service. User identification helps protect personal information from being accessed by unauthorized persons, which in turn helps prevent fraud or misuse.
There are various levels and ways to implement this, from a basic username and password, which must be accompanied by additional forms of identification, including two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). However, with multiple detection steps the trouble increases for trusted users.
Implementing tools that are not visible to the user can help bridge the gap between secure login methods and more insecure login methods. Using highly accurate browser fingerprinting, such as fingerprints, for user authentication offers several advantages over traditional methods:
- Making a browser fingerprint part of a device’s identity is much more complex than other credentials.
- Browser identifiers are always up to date and do not require manual maintenance or renewal like passwords.
- Integrating browser fingerprinting with pre-established authentication models can provide an enhanced level of security by allowing access only to those with compatible and expected devices or operating systems.
Privacy and Regulatory Compliance
As with all solutions that identify users, you want to make sure that you choose a solution that takes into account modern security practices and data processing. For example, Fingerprint does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII) as part of visitor ID and does not track users across websites. Additionally, Fingerprint is proud to be ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and CCPA compliant.
Conclusion
Browser fingerprinting helps personalize user experiences, improve online security, and optimize login security methods. By collecting data about a user’s browser and device, websites can tailor their content to meet users’ specific needs, prevent fraud, and improve authentication. Additionally, browser fingerprinting can reduce friction for trusted users during login while maintaining a secure website.
If you want to implement browser fingerprinting on your website, choose a solution that prioritizes data security and privacy like Fingerprint. With the right approach, browser fingerprinting can be a game-changer in improving the user experience and preventing fraud.
