Biometric Update Podcast explores identification at scale using browser fingerprinting

“Browser fingerprinting is this idea that modern browsers are so complex.” So says Valentin Vasilyev, Chief Technology Officer of Fingerprint, on the latest Biometric Update Podcast. “They’re almost like mini OS operating systems. They expose so much information that can be used potentially to identify devices that you can combine that information to have enough identification accuracy to uniquely identify browsers and mobile devices.”

He says the system considers “things like screen resolution, fonts, the size of your dock, maybe, in macOS, and other things that are unique to your browser or your environment.”

Vasilyev, who created the widely used, open source Fingerprint.js, says these things don’t matter much in isolation. “But when you combine enough signals together and use a clever algorithm on top or clever data science on top, you can actually derive an artificial identifier called browser fingerprint that can uniquely identify a browser. Even though there are billions of browsers and billions of mobile devices, by adding enough entropy –  identification information that aids in identifying devices – the identifier becomes so unique that it’s possible to uniquely identify browsers during account creation, during signups, during password resets.”

The full conversation is available on the latest episode of the Biometric Update Podcast. 

Listen now: Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Podbean

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Article Topics

Biometric Update Podcast  |  browser fingerprinting  |  device fingerprinting  |  digital identity  |  fingerprint