How to spot high-activity devices & stop scaled abuse in its tracks

Fraudsters are efficient. Why wrangle a sprawling botnet when one device, used cleverly, can churn through fake accounts, exploit promotions, and manipulate your metrics at scale?

These high-activity devices are the backbone of device farming, multi-accounting fraud, and other scaled abuse schemes. If you’re on a fraud team for a SaaS platform, fintech company, marketplace, or gaming app, knowing how to detect high-activity devices is essential for keeping your platform safe, without locking out your real users.

Let’s break down what makes these devices risky, why traditional defenses often miss them, and how device intelligence (like Fingerprint’s persistent visitor IDs and Smart Signals) gives you the upper hand against scaled abuse.

What is a high-activity device?

A high-activity device is a single device that generates far more requests, actions, or account interactions than a typical user would. These devices are the workhorses behind scaled fraud operations. Instead of orchestrating attacks from a fleet of devices, fraudsters rely on a few to do the heavy lifting.

Common signs of high activity devices include:

• Creating multiple accounts in rapid succession
• Logging in and out of dozens (or hundreds) of accounts in a short period
• Generating an unusually high number of requests, transactions, or actions per day
• Showing suspiciously regular timing between actions, hinting at automation
• Switching between IP addresses, user agents, or geolocations while maintaining the same underlying device signature

If a device behaves more like a factory assembly line than a person, it’s likely a high-activity device.

Why fraud leads to high-activity devices

Fraud often involves doing the same action over and over: creating fake accounts, redeeming promo codes, testing stolen credentials, etc. That repetition leaves behind a clear signal of devices with unusually high activity. This happens when fraudsters:

• Mass-create fake accounts to exploit sign-up bonuses and referral programs
• Launch credential stuffing attacks and compromise account security
• Repeatedly manipulate ratings, reviews, or in-game economies
• Abuse promotional offers at scale

Even when they use real browsers and try to mimic human behavior, the sheer volume of usage can give them away, especially if you’re looking at long-term device behavior and not just one session.

Why traditional detection falls short

Most legacy detection methods are easy for fraudsters to bypass. Cookies can be cleared in seconds, IP addresses can be easily swapped using a VPN, and user agents can be spoofed at will.

Even basic bot detection can be fooled by fraudsters using real browsers and human-like interaction patterns. When someone rotates identities, clears browser data, or hops between networks, you need more than surface-level checks.

This is where device intelligence comes in — but not all solutions are created equal. Many struggle to maintain a persistent identifier when fraudsters actively try to hide.

How Fingerprint identifies high-activity devices

Fingerprint’s advanced device intelligence platform generates a stable, persistent visitor ID for each browser or device that visits your site. This isn’t just a cookie or an IP address; it’s a unique identifier built from over 100 device, network, and behavioral signals.

Even if a fraudster clears cookies, switches to incognito mode, or changes their IP address, their device will still generate the same visitor ID. This persistence lets you see device behavior over time, making it much harder for fraudsters to hide unusually high activity. Because the visitor ID remains stable across sessions, you can connect the dots between seemingly unrelated accounts or actions. 

Smart Signals: Context for every device

A persistent identifier is powerful, but context makes it actionable. That’s where Fingerprint’s Smart Signals come in. These behavioral fraud signals help you tell the difference between a legitimate power user and a device being used for abuse.

High-Activity Device Detection

This Smart Signal does the work for you in flagging devices that generate more requests or actions than 98% of your other visitors. The signal analyzes visit frequency and traffic spikes tied to a single visitor ID, so you can catch devices operating at suspicious scale.

Velocity Signals

Velocity Signals show you how quickly a device racks up new accounts, IP addresses, or geographic locations. If you see a device associated with 15 different accounts in 24 hours, that’s a red flag.

Bot Detection

Identifies when activity is being driven by automation tools (like Selenium or Puppeteer), even if the device is using a real browser. Distinguish between good bots, like known search engine crawlers, and bad bots.

Browser Tampering Detection

Flags anti-detect browsers or when a browser has been modified to avoid identification, another common strategy in scaled abuse.

When you combine these signals, you get a high-resolution picture of device behavior that’s tough for fraudsters to evade and easy for your team to act on quickly.

How to use high-activity device detection in your fraud strategy

Spotting high-activity devices is step one. The real value comes from weaving these insights into your risk scoring, manual review, and automated response workflows.

Risk scoring

Use the High-Activity Device Smart Signal to bump up the risk score for suspicious actions like account creation, logins, or transactions. This triggers extra scrutiny where it matters most.

Manual review

Flag accounts or devices for human review when they cross certain activity thresholds, especially if other suspicious Smart Signals are present.

Automated responses

Set up graduated responses based on activity level:

• Low threshold exceeded: Increase monitoring and logging
• Medium threshold exceeded: Require additional authentication
• High threshold exceeded: Temporarily restrict account creation or high-value actions
• Extreme threshold exceeded: Block device access pending manual review

This approach helps you catch fraudsters without locking out legitimate power users.

Tailoring detection for SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, and gaming

Every industry faces its own flavor of scaled abuse, and high-activity device detection can be tuned to match.

• SaaS platforms: Watch for devices creating dozens of free trial accounts to avoid subscription fees or exploit referral programs.
• Fintech: Look for rapid account creation and frequent logins from the same device — classic signs of credential stuffing or bonus abuse.
• Marketplaces: High-activity devices often drive fake reviews, manipulate ratings, or cycle through buyer and seller accounts to exploit promotions.
• Gaming: Device farming is used to grind in-game rewards, manipulate leaderboards, or create smurf accounts for cheating.

Fingerprint’s persistent visitor IDs and Smart Signals let you set context-aware thresholds and responses, so you can adapt to the abuse patterns that matter most for your platform.

Avoiding false positives

High-activity device detection can sometimes flag legitimate users, like:

• Shared devices in public spaces
• Power users during promotional periods
• Devices used for legitimate automation

To minimize friction:

• Maintain allowlists for known legitimate high-activity scenarios (e.g., verified business accounts, customer service reps)
• Use progressive verification instead of immediate blocks. Start with additional authentication, then limit actions, and escalate to manual review if needed
• Monitor user feedback and adjust thresholds if you see patterns of false positives

Strengthen your defenses against scaled abuse

High-activity device detection is essential for stopping device farming, multi-accounting fraud, and other scaled abuse tactics. By combining persistent device intelligence with real-time behavioral signals, you can spot suspicious devices, connect the dots between related accounts, and respond fast, without frustrating your real users.

Curious how this works in practice? You can try Fingerprint’s Smart Signals and persistent visitor IDs with a free trial, or connect with our team to discuss how device intelligence can keep your platform secure and abuse-free.