Fingerprints
A fingerprint is a hashed identifier generated by collecting and combining different low-level signals to form a stable and highly unique identifier of the device accessing your application..
Stytch's Device Fingerprinting product returns multiple fingerprints and identifiers based on information gathered about the hardware, browser and network being used, in order to give you a comprehensive picture of the traffic on your application.
Usage
Rules can be set based on specific fingerprints via our Set Rules functionality in order to customize the behavior for specific devices, or signal sets. Fingerprints can also be tied to other user data to associate known hardware sets, browsers, and other attributes with your user base.
A fingerprint’s uniqueness, stability, and signal set are all factors to consider when determining which fingerprint to use for a given use case.
Fingerprints
Below is an example /lookup response where your application would consume and potentially store fingerprints, followed by a table outlining the distinct qualities of each fingerprint.
For more details on different fingerprint characterstics and usage with our /rules endpoint, see our Settings Rules with DFP Guide.
| Fingerprint | Definition | Use Cases | Uniqueness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor ID | The cookie stored on the user’s device that uniquely identifies them. | Having a unique identifier for a user. | Guaranteed unique |
| Browser ID | Combination of Visitor ID and Hardware Fingerprint to create a clear identifier of a browser. | Detecting stolen sessions since the browser ID should only be associated with a single hardware fingerprint. | Guaranteed unique |
| Visitor Fingerprint | A highly unique, cookie-less way of identifying a unique user based on a diverse set of signals. | Enforcing paywalls since the visitor fingerprint will be consistent across incognito mode, or banning specific users in a cookie-less way. | 99.9% unique |
| Browser Fingerprint | Combination of signals to identify a browser and its specific version, on a specific device. | Banning a specific user’s browser version across all profiles on multiple user accounts on a given machine. | Low |
| Hardware Fingerprint | Combinations of signals to identify an operating system and architecture. | Detecting proxy or location spoofing since the hardware fingerprint will be stable across different locations. | Low |
| Network Fingerprint | Combination of signals associated with a specific network commonly known as TLS fingerprinting. | Blocking programmatic access like Golang, Curl, or Node. | Low |