We all know that humans have a unique identification marks such as fingerprints or handwriting style – but did you know that most of us have a unique Clickprint too?
Clickprint,or browsing behaviour is a unique pattern of web surfing behavior based on actions such as the number of pages viewed per session, the number of minutes spent on each page, the time or day of the week the page is visited, and so on.” – as described by researchers (Professor Balaji Padmanabhan, at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Catherine Yang, of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis).
The researchers claim that they will need anywhere between three to sixteen browsing sessions to identify an individual’s clickprint.
The duo believe that one of the most significant usage of Clickprint will be in preventing online fraud. So for e.g. if somebody steals your banking login id/password and tries accessing the details, the bank can detect the difference in the browsing behavior and take immediate action. Similarly, eCommerce sites would love to have such a fraud detection technique, given the amount of clickfrauds that’s generated.
But what about the privacy issues? Aren’t researchers talking about tracking one’s web footprints? Step-by-step?Click by click?
“If Amazon or a credit card company that can track everything you do uses clickprints, the perception is different because you expect it”..If clickprints are used as a way to prevent fraud, it’s highly unlikely there will be an uproar over privacy, says Padmanabhan.
Download the research paper here. Read Guardian’s report.
Related: Browse without fear – Anonymous surfing
Filed under:Clickprint
