Fingerprinting Device: How Companies Identify and Track Customers?

Device typing is a way to identify a computer device (e.g. desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone) based on its different settings. Most people own the same device but only if we track the time and location settings, app, apps and plugins installed, browser versions, etc. We quickly find a unique device. The goal of device typing is to connect real-world Internet identity.

Fingerprinting Device

In the past, this often done for security purposes - think of those warnings you receive when you sign up for certain online services from a new phone or tablet. Today, however, it increasingly used by advertisers to learn about us, to study our behavior, and to sell us things.

Device Tracking

Organizations are now able to use our device tracks to identify us, monitor our activities, and predict what we will do next. For retailers, for example, this means that they can start tracking our actions from the first time we show interest in the product, the way we browse the product list, to the point where we are selling.

Ritchie Hall - The CIO of TouchCR, which incorporates fingerprint techniques into its B-2-C clients, tells me: ”

Of course, fingerprinting devices would be very straightforward if we all used the same device. That clearly not the case - last year Google reported that 70% of Internet users connected at least two different devices each day. To resolve that one person using two devices to make, for example, to order a pizza, actually the same person, another identifier required - for example, an email address, or payment details.

Big Data Performance

Similarly, devices often change hands, share between groups, or have their fingers modified in some way, for example, app updates. This makes the fingerprinting device more complex than it first appears. For it to work properly, it requires a continuous shortcut and verification process that requires CPU power and data bandwidth, making it Big Data performance.

However, as tools and service frameworks become available, it places this kind of disengagement on resource-intensive products. This means that we may see a lot in the near future.

Fingerprinting device overcomes some of the inefficiencies of using other customer tracking methods. Most notably this includes cookies embedded in our web browsers, which businesses have long used to monitor our behavior when we visit their websites. The problem is that cookies can be removed whenever we want, and it is much easier for us to stop certain sites, services, or companies from using them to track us. Fingerprinting device do not have this limit as you do not rely on local data storage on our machines, but simply monitor the data sent and received as the devices communicate.

Stored Cookies

Amiqueque.org, a privacy awareness site, refers to taking the device's fingerprints as a "cookie-free monster". Because of how it allows us to be tracked without having to store cookies.

Monitoring and tracking the device is much harder for us to avoid than previous technologies. Which makes it a bit trivial, and concerns are raised about the privacy challenges they represent.

I mentioned this to Hale, who said the solution was for companies to look forward. And clarify how they collect data and the reasons for that. “Two things need to happen - there must be some power to choose.

"And then if they choose to enter, the terms of service need to clearly indicate what is going to happen."

Cookie law

This could mean sending more, and clearer, notifications to users to let them know they are being tracked. In line with "cookie law" notices that EU users see on almost every website. Additional warnings that behavior can be tracked by the device's fingerprints are uncommon - or legally enforceable. In areas with sensitive information.

In some areas that have been slow to set rules on what retailers can do with personal information. Such as the US, the consequences can be overwhelming.

"Did we have an important discussion with our attorneys about who owns this data?" Hale tells me.

“Entrances are usually provided by third parties - you have a large retail chain. With thousands of stores, and a third party in charge of their entrances.

“Who controls that data? The customer needs to know and be notified when logging in when [the terms of service apply] to a company that owns retail stores, not an entry point provider, who can resell that data at will. ”

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Anyone who doesn't want to track, be it cookies or device fingerprints. There are solutions that involve the use of private networks (VPNs). That make it seem like we are connecting to a different machine. Anonymous Internet protocols such as TOR, and apps. Designed to publish only device details that will keep you indistinguishable from other users. Unless you are a whistleblower or want to hide in a vicious state. This can seem like an overstatement if you just want to avoid your bank. Or store getting too much of you.

But it is an increasingly popular strategy. Last month YouGov reported that 16% of UK internet users used a VPN. While 25% of them did so to avoid advertisers following their behavior.