Digital Exhaust and Behavioral Fingerprinting

What is Digital Exhaust and Behavioral Fingerprinting?

Digital exhaust refers to the metadata and information that users leave behind while interacting with online networks. Digital exhaust and behavioral fingerprinting are utilized in cybersecurity, surveillance, and marketing. Big data analysts and marketing analysts previously utilized a user’s cache and cookies to market products and services to consumers that met their interests and ecommerce purchase patterns. Cybersecurity analysts now often use digital fingerprinting as a key step in the information-gathering process to create detailed profiles of systems, identifying potential threats, weaknesses, or malicious activity. Analysts also analyze user activity by watching the mouse movements, scroll patterns, location history, and app usage. Brian Nussbaum from The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School states, “These artifacts we leave behind are not like exhaust, but more like fossils, much more permanent” (1).