Fingerprinting Protects Privacy in Fighting Online Fraud

There has been some recent discussion in different articles regarding whether or not device identification, also referred to as device fingerprinting, when used to fight online fraud, constitutes a violation of privacy. The topic came up recently at a panel at RSA on the Benefits and Dangers of Device Fingerprinting. The essence of the discussion is that device fingerprinting provides significant benefits for online businesses in both providing an additional factor for authentication, as is used by many online banks, and is also beneficial for fighting fraud by identifying computers that have been used in the past for fraudulent activities and stopping future transactions from those systems.

 

The reality is that device fingerprinting fraud prevention systems provide some of the only fraud management tools to online businesses that don’t rely heavily on personally identifiable information. Instead of decrying privacy violations, privacy advocates should be looking to embrace systems that achieve the purpose of reducing online fraud while still protecting the privacy of good online users.

http://blog.iovation.com/2009/05/04/device-fingerprinting-protects-privacy-in-fighting-online-fraud/