Identify unique devices and spoofers

Device spoofing involves masking or altering a device’s identifiers, like its MAC address (Media Access Control) or GPS location. This can have a number of different applications, from testing apps to protecting privacy, but it’s also frequently used for fraudulent activities, such as click fraud or phishing.

Fraudsters use a identify unique devices and spoofers of smart tricks and technical manipulation to make fake traffic look real to analytics tools and fraud detection systems. The problem is that these systems rely on the data they’re fed, so if a bot says it’s using an iPhone in New York and a browser called Safari, these platforms take that at face value.

The easiest way to spoof a device is to change its MAC address, which acts as a kind of network fingerprint (think of it as a device’s fingerprint). By faking this information, a device can “change identity” to appear as a completely new user. Some fraudsters even fake the operating system and screen resolution to look more convincing.

AI-Powered Bot Detection Platform: Prevent Fraud and Secure User Interactions

Thankfully, advanced tools can identify spoofed devices by looking at both behavioral patterns and device characteristics. For example, Stytch’s Device Fingerprinting looks at a wide range of signals to determine whether or not a user is actually on the device they claim to be on. It can also detect if multiple users are clicking from the same suspicious device or if there’s a cluster of clicks from one IP or geographic region, which are indicators of spoofing.