HARDWARE FINGERPRINT HOW TO FIND ANDROID
Android developers need to find alternative ways to uniquely identify users before these options are no longer available. There have historically been three main ways to identify a device in Android without the use of device fingerprinting.Īll of these methods share a common theme: they are ineffective for some use cases today, or are likely to be discontinued in the near future. At-Risk Android Device Identification Methods Additionally, remaining methods of identification including SSAID are easy for dedicated fraudsters to spoof, providing little protection against sophisticated fraud attacks. However, many of these signals are now unavailable to app developers, with more expected to be removed, restricted, or require opt-in permissions from users in coming updates. From download to login to payment, the number of ways a malicious actor can commit fraud is ever increasing, and depending on your application, the most lucrative forms of fraud will vary.Īndroid developers had it easy in the past, with access to several system-provided identifiers including hardware signals and the system-generated Android ID (or SSAID).
Why Device Identification Mattersĭevice identification is an essential part of a mobile developer’s toolkit for detecting and preventing fraud.Īn accurate and persistent device ID can flag users that are most likely to commit fraud, and mitigate fraudulent attempts by incorporating authentication flows or blocking users based on their usage history. In this article, we explain some of the current challenges of Android device identification, and how device fingerprinting can be a stable and reliable alternative to system-generated identifiers like ANDROID_ID that are likely to be discontinued in the future.
Last week, our team launched Fingerprint Android, an open-source library for accurately identifying Android devices using all available signals.