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Fingerprint analyzes billions of unique devices and browsers every year. In doing so, we help thousands of organizations reduce fraud, strengthen security, and improve the customer experience. That scale gives us rare visibility into how online traffic is shifting, from both everyday users and sophisticated fraudsters.
What is device intelligence?
Device intelligence incorporates characteristics of the device or browser, such as screen size, installed fonts, software version, and more. It also notes factors that may signal suspicious traffic, like incognito mode usage, VPN presence, and browser tampering. These insights help companies identify potentially suspicious activity earlier and more accurately. (Learn more in our full device intelligence guide.)
We shared several stats about the browsing behavior we saw in 2023; some metrics increased substantially in the update for 2024. Here are four notable year-over-year changes.
43% year-over-year growth in devices & browsers identified
In 2023, Fingerprint identified 2.96 billion unique devices and browsers. In 2024, that number rose to 4.22 billion.
(Note: Fingerprint does not track people across different websites. If one device visits two different websites, two separate visitor IDs are generated.)
Malicious bot traffic now outnumbers legitimate bots
In 2023, 27% of bot traffic flagged by Fingerprint was classified as malicious. In 2024, that number jumped to 56%.
Malicious bots perform all sorts of fraudulent activity, such as credential stuffing to break into user accounts, card testing to validate stolen credit card numbers, and catfishing to deceive social platform users. But there are “good” bots — these include search engine crawlers, accessibility tools, and emerging AI agents.
Organizations should be increasingly wary of automated traffic, but blocking it outright is a dramatic move that can hamper growth. A tool that can help distinguish between good and bad bots lets you allow or block access, or step up security on a case-by-case basis.
Nearly 1 in 6 visits now happen through VPN
In 2024, 15.3% of traffic to Fingerprint’s customers was through VPN compared to 11% in 2023. This 39% growth emphasizes the deepening complexity of making sense of who’s visiting your site.
More users are turning to VPNs for privacy, secure browsing on public networks, or accessing region-restricted content. However, VPNs are also a tool of choice for fraudsters who want to hide their location or use the same device to access multiple accounts.
The line between privacy-enhancing tools and fraud tactics continues to blur, so it’s important to base risk decisions on many factors to determine the intent behind VPN use. (Read our VPN detection guide for more.)
Incognito browsing is up 70% in one year
Private browsing is also on the rise. Fingerprint saw a 70% increase in the share of incognito browsing from 2023 to 2024, from 5.3% to 9%.
Privacy-conscious users turn to incognito mode to keep accounts separate, to see if they can get a better price if they aren’t logged in, and if they just want to stay anonymous. Attackers, on the other hand, use it for testing security gaps or trying to reset identifiers between visits.
While incognito mode hides local cookies and browsing history, it doesn’t prevent device intelligence–based identification, so security and fraud teams can still get important context while respecting user privacy.
How to stay ahead in an increasingly privacy-conscious world
With an increasing amount of traffic coming from obscured sources, device intelligence is a valuable tool in an organization’s anti-fraud arsenal. Fingerprint analyzes over 100 real-time signals to generate a persistent, highly accurate visitor ID for every device that visits a site or app, and Smart Signals, including Bot Detection, VPN Detection, and Browser Tamper Detection, give organizations actionable, real-time insights so fraud teams can spot suspicious behavior before fraudsters can do any harm.
Take a closer look at the data in our 2023 and 2024 Device Intelligence Roundups
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FAQ
In 2024, Fingerprint detected VPN usage by 15.3% of visitors, which is a 39% increase from 11% in 2023. In other words, nearly 1 in 6 sessions was through VPN.
Incognito or private browsing mode usage rose 70% from 2023 to 2024, from 5.3% to 9% of all traffic, based on Fingerprint’s global traffic analysis.
In 2024, Fingerprint classified 56% of all bot traffic as malicious, up from 27% in 2023. This means over half of automated traffic that we detected came from “bad bots” likely being used for fraud, rather than “good bots” acting on behalf of services such as search engines and AI tools.
