Android devices

Fingerprint's device intelligence platform is also available for Android devices. Our device intelligence platform for Android helps you to accurately identify the devices that interact with your mobile app and provides high-quality smart signals that will help you identify risky transactions before they happen.

To make integrations with mobile apps easier, we offer SDKs for apps built natively using Android as well as for apps built using multi-platform frameworks (e.g. React Native).

A Fingerprint account is required to be able to use the Fingerprint Identification SDK in your mobile apps. If you do not have an account yet, please sign up for one.

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Download our demo app from Google Play to see Fingerprint in action!

Device Identifier

When the Fingerprint Identification SDK is integrated into your mobile app, it will collect several attributes from the device. With the help of these attributes and additional algorithms, Fingerprint is able to provide a unique device identifier (i.e. visitorId) for every device on which your app is installed.

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Did you know?

The device identifier generated by the Android SDK (embedded within your mobile app) will be different from the visitor ID generated by the Javascript agent (embedded within your website).

When compared with browsers, the identification accuracy is better for mobile devices because we identify mobile devices using signals that have higher longevity than those used for identifying browsers. But there are scenarios where a visitorId does not persist.

For your reference, we have listed various scenarios where a visitorId will remain the same before and after and where a new visitorId will be created.

Proximity Detection for Android Devices

Proximity detection is a complementary, location-based signal. Unlike the visitor ID, the proximity ID does not identify a unique device but instead represents a fixed geographical zone within which the device is observed. This provides an additional layer of context, making it possible to identify groups of devices in the same physical area or a single device that may have changed its identity while remaining in the same zone.

• To use this feature, make sure to update your app to use Android SDK v2.10.0 or higher.
• Ensure your app declares the required location permissions. For integration details, please follow the instructions on the Android SDK configuration page.
• Proximity IDs and related data (e.g., confidence level, precision radius) will be exposed only via the Server API, webhooks, or when Sealed Client Results are enabled.

We use a discrete global grid system to generate proximity data in a consistent and privacy-conscious way. This approach allows us to represent user locations as coarse, non-identifiable spatial zones (proximity IDs), enabling scalable proximity detection and fraud analysis while protecting user privacy.

The response will include proximity results in the following structure:

{
  "proximity": {
    "data": {
      "id": "Ykq4nTqI4aa",
      "precisionRadius": 10,
      "confidence": 0.91
    }
  }
}

id

The id field is a stable identifier for a given proximity zone. Devices observed within the same zone will share the same id. It can be used for detecting behaviors like:

• Devices frequently appearing together (co-location patterns).
• Repeated activity from the same physical area.
• Potential device farms or shared access points. id cannot be reverse-mapped to a specific geolocation, enabling privacy-preserving location-based analysis without compromising user identity or precision.

precisionRadius

The precisionRadius field indicates the precision level of the proximity zone, expressed in meters. For example, "precisionRadius": 10 means the device's location was mapped to a zone covering an area approximately 10 meters across.

• Smaller values correspond to finer-grained zones and higher precision.
• Proximity precision levels are hierarchical: each proximity ID is contained within a parent proximity ID at a coarser level (larger precisionRadius).
  • Devices with identical coordinates can map to different proximity IDs if their reported location accuracies differ significantly.
  • For example, identical coordinates with 5 m and 10 m location accuracy would map to the same proximity ID, while 50 m accuracy would map to a different, coarser proximity ID.
• By default, we return the most precise proximity ID based on the location signals, but you can also retrieve proximity data at a specific (default or larger) precisionRadius using /events/search.

How to interpret precisionRadius

confidence

The confidence field ranges from 0 to 1 and reflects the likelihood that the true device location lies within the mapped proximity zone rather than an adjacent one. It is calculated by evaluating multiple factors that determine how well the device location coordinates and accuracy radius fit within the proximity zone.

• Scores closer to 1 indicate high confidence that the true device location is inside the mapped proximity zone, as the device location area fits cleanly within its bounds.
• Scores closer to 0 indicate low confidence, as the device location area is only partially contained within the proximity zone bounds, suggesting the true location point may lie within an adjacent zone. Even with a score of 0, the true location will always be either within the mapped proximity zone or an immediately adjacent one. Retrieving proximity IDs from /events/search at coarser precision levels (filtering by larger precisionRadius values) typically yields higher confidence scores.

Android Smart Signals

Smart Signals are actionable device intelligence signals that help you to make informed decisions about the device and thus prevent fraud. These signals could be used as input to your machine learning models behind your fraud detection or risk mitigation engines. For example, when you know that a request is originating from a rooted device or from a recently factory reset device, you will be able to take additional precautionary security steps (e.g. multi-factor authentication).

For Android, the following smart signals are available:

• Android Emulator Detection
• Cloned App Detection
• Factory Reset Detection
• Frida Detection
• Geolocation Spoofing Detection
• IP Geolocation Detection
• IP Blocklist Detection
• MitM Attack Detection
• Rooted Device Detection
• Tampered Request Detection
• VPN Detection

These smart signals are available as part of our Pro Plus and Enterprise plans. If you are interested in one or more of these signals, then please contact our support team to enable them for you. Signing up for an Enterprise plan does not automatically enable these signals.

Fingerprint Identification SDK for Android

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Current Version: 2.10.0

For release notes and older versions, visit our Changelog for Android SDK page.

Supported Versions

The minimum version that the Fingerprint Identification SDK for Android supports is Lollipop, API Level 21. Per Google, this will allow your app to be compatible with a wide variety of active Android devices.

Required Permissions

Fingerprint Identification SDK for Android requires the following normal permissions, without which the SDK cannot function properly. These permissions are required to identify the device and provide additional intelligence.

• android.permission.INTERNET
• com.google.android.providers.gsf.permission.READ_GSERVICES

Unlike the runtime permissions (aka dangerous permissions), these permissions do not require consent from the user. See Permissions on Android to learn more about the different types of permissions.

Getting Started Guides

Our Getting Started guides are aimed at helping you to easily integrate our SDK with your apps.

• For native Android apps, see Mobile SDKs > Android.
• For apps built using Flutter, see our Flutter SDK on Github.
• For apps built using React Native, see our React Native SDK on Github.

Data Safety Requirements for Google Play

For every app that is uploaded to the Google Play Store, Google requires that the app's privacy and security practices are made available to all its users. For this reason, when an app (or a new version) is uploaded to the Play Store, Google requires app developers to fill out a data safety form. See Provide information for Google Play's Data safety section for more information.

If your app includes our Android SDK, then you can use the following as a reference to fill out the data safety questionnaire:

Section: Data collection and security

1. Does your app collect or share any of the required user data types? Yes
2. Is all of the user data collected by your app encrypted in transit? Yes

Section: Data types

1. Select all of the user data types collected or shared by your app
   1. App info and performance -> Diagnostics
   2. Device or other IDs.

Section: Data usage and handling

FingerprintJS-Android: Open-source identification for Android

We also provide a lightweight, open-source library called fingerprintjs-android which is available to use for free by everyone. Our commercial SDK, Fingerprint Identification for Android, is based on our well-maintained, free, open-source library.

Compared to the open-source library, our commercial SDK collects many more attributes from the device. It also uses advanced fingerprinting and matching algorithms to create a unique device identifier.

For your better understanding, here is a complete set of differences between our open-source library (fingerprintjs-android) and our commercial SDK (fingerprint-android-pro).