Are you customizing your fingerprint but still getting caught by websites?
You can first scan your fingerprint using a tool like BrowserScan to find out why you’re getting caught.
BrowserScan checks your fingerprint like a typical website and highlights vulnerabilities in it that might be helping websites catch you.
If BrowserScan is a new name to you, this guide is for you.
In this guide, you’ll get a brief overview of how BrowserScan works and a step-by-step tutorial for how to pass its test (and other websites you’re targeting) with a customized fingerprint using Gologin.
What is BrowserScan and How Does It Audit Your Fingerprint?
BrowserScan.net (not BrowserScan.org) is a popular fingerprint analysis tool.
It scans and displays your entire fingerprint while also exposing the issues with it. If there are no issues with your fingerprint, you get a browser fingerprint authenticity score of 100%. If there are issues, you get a lower score based on the type and severity of the issue.
BrowserScan also lists the issues that it finds and how many points you lost (ignore the advertisement on their website in the screenshot below).
You are also shown all your fingerprint parameters in the following five categories:
- IP address (public IP, IP leaked by WebRTC, IP count in last 7 days, etc)
- Browser (User agent obtained from two sources, browser name, version, OS, etc)
- Location (Country, city, postal code, geocodes, etc)
- Software (Time zone and time from IP and system clock, languages, fonts, etc)
- Hardware (Screen resolution, graphics driver supplier, audio fingerprint, RAM, etc)
BrowserScan also offers mini checking tools to test certain parts of your fingerprint individually, such as:
- IP address lookup
- DNS leak test
- WebRTC leak test
- HTTP2/SSL/TLS test
- Bot detection
- Canvas checker
- Timezone detection
In terms of depth of scan, BrowserScan is similar to Iphey and Pixelscan, two fingerprint analysis tools that I have reviewed before.
Who Needs to Manage Their Fingerprint (and Why)?
All the details BrowserScan reveals about you are what the websites you visit can see about you. Some websites can retrieve even more information than what BrowserScan shows.
Websites have their reasons for collecting this information. Some of them simply want to analyze the activities of individual IPs to make sure they are behaving normally. If an IP shows bot behavior or starts sending abnormal amounts of traffic, for example, the websites can block those IPs.
Some other websites use your fingerprint to profile you and track you across sessions to understand your behaviour. Dynamic websites use this information to personalize the content (e.g., ads) of the webpage for each user.
Most people don’t have any clue that websites have that much information about them. This entire process happens in the background and within seconds.
But there are some privacy-conscious professionals who find browser fingerprinting intrusive. They don’t want websites to have access to that much information about them and then track them across sessions or sell their data to marketers and other third parties.
Some of these professionals are as follows:
- Affiliate marketers: The platforms these professionals work with expect their IP to match the account’s country. Affiliate marketers use VPNs/proxies and customize other fingerprint parameters to fulfill that requirement without getting caught.
- E-commerce store managers: These people manage e-commerce stores for others, or they might have multiple stores of their own. But many ecommerce platforms usually restrict one person from managing more than a few stores at a time. To evade this condition, these professionals create a unique browser profile with its own unique fingerprint for each store. This gives the impression that the stores are being run by different individuals from separate locations.
- Data scrapers: Data scrapers automate their browsers to copy large amounts of information from websites at once. To avoid being identified and blocked by websites for being bots, data scrapers attach a human fingerprint to their script to trick websites into believing they’re normal visitors.
Why Basic Anti-Fingerprinting Tricks Fail Against Websites
Most of the professionals assume that they simply have to change their location using a VPN or proxy and that’ll fool the websites they’re visiting.
But modern websites are rarely that easy to fool.
They often have multiple ways to source the same information. For instance, they already get your IP from your browser the moment you visit them. But they can also source the IP from the WebRTC leak, too.
If you change your browser’s IP using a VPN, the website can still source your real IP from the WebRTC leak.
The mismatch gives it away that you’re trying to hide your location, and the websites might block your access or create hindrances using CAPTCHA.
But that’s not the only way for websites to catch a mismatch in your location. They can compare the timezone associated with your IP and the timezone of your system clock to detect that you’re hiding information. They can also geolocate you to get to your actual location and expose your proxy/VPN use.
Beyond location and IP, websites can detect inconsistencies in other areas. They can also tell when you’re using an automated script or when you’re faking your operating system, etc.
A Demonstration Using BrowserScan
BrowserScan can also detect all these issues with your fingerprint to give you a chance to fix them before you visit these websites.
Let me show you how BrowserScan detected my VPN use.
I used a VPN’s browser extension to change my browser’s location to Paris, and then visited BrowserScan for the scan.
BrowserScan easily detected that I was using a proxy and gave me an 80% browser fingerprint authenticity. Seems like BrowserScan flags VPNs and proxies the same way, since both route your traffic through a remote server. The tool reports either as “Proxy: Yes.”
It also listed the two issues it found in my fingerprint, which were:
- My IP timezone doesn’t match my system clock’s timezone
- My browser’s IP doesn’t match my real IP
But how did BrowserScan access my real IP when I was using a VPN? As I mentioned earlier, websites can access your real IP through WebRTC, a technology that facilitates real-time communication between users online (audio/video call, screen sharing, etc).
In most browsers, WebRTC is set up to provide your real IP when websites ask for it.
BrowserScan used this same vulnerability to access my real IP and conclude that the other IP belonged to a VPN.
You also read earlier that websites can source time zone and time information from multiple sources to look for inconsistencies within them.
That’s what BrowserScan did. It compared the timezone and time sourced from the browser’s IP with the timezone and time sourced from the system clock and found them inconsistent.
But does that mean perfect fingerprint spoofing is impossible? Not at all.
You simply have to use the right tool for it. In other words, an antidetect browser like Gologin.
Next, I’ll use the Gologin browser and show you how to pass BrowserScan with a modified browser fingerprint.
Step-by-Step: How to Pass BrowserScan Using Gologin
Gologin is an antidetect browser that lets you customize your browser fingerprint. It also allows you to create multiple browser profiles and assign them unique fingerprints to make it look like each profile is a separate device.
Gologin also has built-in proxy settings, which eliminates the need for third-party VPN extensions. But if you have your own proxy, you can use that too within Gologin.
Now I’ll use Gologin and show you how it passes the BrowserScan test with a different fingerprint than your usual one. I’ll list the steps so you can also perform them.
1. Download the appropriate Gologin browser version for your operating system. Install and launch the browser.
2. If you already have a Gologin account, enter your credentials and log in. Otherwise, sign up for a new account.
3. Once logged in, you’ll see a dashboard. Click the Add Profile button in the left panel to start creating a new browser profile. In the profile creation window, enter a name for the profile.
4. In the same screen on the right side, you’ll see that Gologin has already assigned you a random browser fingerprint. You can customize almost all the fingerprint parameters that you can see.
5. In the same window, you’ll see options for setting a proxy. You can either use Gologin’s built-in proxy or enter credentials of third-party proxies if you have them. For this demonstration, I will use Gologin’s built-in residential proxy from Germany. You can tweak the browser fingerprint in other tabs after the Proxy tab. The Overview tab allows you to customize the operating system and get a random fingerprint with the click of a button.
6. Having done everything, click the Create Profile button at the bottom. You can access your profile settings in the future, too. Now click the Run button next to the newly created profile to launch it.
7. A browser window will open. Type BrowserScan.net in the address bar and open the website. Once the scan completes, you’ll see that Gologin has passed the BrowserScan check with 100% fingerprint authenticity.
8. Scroll down, and you’ll see that the IP, timezone, and time are all consistent. Gologin also blocks WebRTC leaks to prevent websites from obtaining your real IP address from there.
But how did Gologin pull this off without being detected?
Gologin is built to adjust your fingerprint automatically when you manually change a parameter.
For example, when you change your IP inside Gologin, the WebRTC, Geolocation, and timezone all adjust to that change accordingly.
That’s why websites fail to find any inconsistencies in your fingerprint and let you pass.
If you are a data scraper, affiliate marketer, someone who manages multiple accounts, or anyone, you can easily use Gologin because it has the same interface as Google Chrome. The difference is that Gologin allows you to customize your fingerprint and make multiple browser profiles with ease.
Start using Gologin if you haven’t already and pass tools like BrowserScan without being detected.
Download Gologin for free and manage multiple accounts without bans!
FAQs
What is a BrowserScan check used for?
BrowserScan is used to expose vulnerabilities in one’s browser fingerprint. The tool analyzes your fingerprint like a typical website does in the backend and shows what a website can see about you.
Can a standard VPN pass the BrowserScan test?
You cannot pass the BrowserScan test with 100% fingerprint authenticity when using a VPN. Unless you use an antidetect browser like Gologin, BrowserScan can easily tell you’re faking your IP by comparing it against your real IP, timezone, time, and geolocation.
