Puppeteer Fingerprinting Guide: Step-By-Step, Easy!

In this guide, I’ll explore browser fingerprinting, how it works, and how Puppeteer, a popular tool for automating web browsers, can create fingerprints and protect against them. I’ll also cover practical steps you can take to mitigate fingerprinting when using Puppeteer for web scraping and automation.

What is Browser Fingerprinting?

Browser fingerprinting is a method websites use to collect information about your device and browser to create a unique profile of you. This profile, or “fingerprint,” is created by gathering data points such as:

• Browser type and version: Information about the browser you are using, including its version number.
• Operating system: Details about your operating system, such as whether you’re using Windows, macOS, or Linux.
• Screen resolution: The dimensions of your device’s screen.
• Installed plugins: A list of plugins installed in your browser.
• Timezone: Your device’s current timezone.
• Language settings: The language your browser is set to use.
• Fonts: The fonts installed on your system.

By combining these data points, websites can create a fingerprint that is often unique to your device. This allows them to track you across the web, even if you delete cookies or use incognito mode.

How Puppeteer Can Be Used for Fingerprinting

Puppeteer is a powerful tool that allows developers to automate web browsers like Chrome and Chromium. It’s widely used for web scraping, automated testing, and performance monitoring. However, it can also be used to mimic or manipulate browser fingerprints, making it both a tool for creating and combating fingerprinting.

When using Puppeteer, your automated browser sessions might inadvertently create fingerprints that can be detected by websites. This happens because Puppeteer-controlled browsers might behave slightly differently from normal user-driven browsers, revealing that the interaction is automated. For instance, Puppeteer might expose certain browser properties or execute scripts faster than a human could, signaling to websites that they’re dealing with a bot.

Mitigating Fingerprinting in Puppeteer

If you’re using Puppeteer and want to avoid detection through fingerprinting, there are several techniques you can implement. Below are some practical tips to help you mitigate fingerprinting:

Use a Stealth Plugin

One of the easiest ways to reduce the risk of fingerprinting when using Puppeteer is to use a stealth plugin, such as puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth. This plugin modifies your Puppeteer instance to behave more like a regular browser. It hides many of the default properties that can give away the fact that you’re using an automated browser.

To use this plugin, install it via npm and include it in your Puppeteer script:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-extra');
const StealthPlugin = require('puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth');
puppeteer.use(StealthPlugin());
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await browser.close();
})();

Randomize Your User-Agent

The User-Agent string is a key data point used in browser fingerprinting. It tells websites which browser and operating system you’re using. By default, Puppeteer uses a generic User-Agent, which can be easily identified as a bot. To avoid this, you should randomize your User-Agent string for each session.

Here’s how you can set a custom User-Agent in Puppeteer:

await page.setUserAgent('Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36');

You can generate random User-Agents using libraries like user-agents or manually select from a list of popular User-Agents.

Mimic Human Interaction

Automated browsing can be detected by the speed and patterns of interactions. Human users have varied behaviors — they might pause before clicking a link or move the mouse in a non-linear fashion. To avoid detection, you can program Puppeteer to mimic these human behaviors.

For example, you can add delays between actions to simulate human reaction time:

await page.click('#some-button', {delay: 100});

You can also use the page.mouse API to move the mouse in a natural way:

await page.mouse.move(100, 200);
await page.mouse.down();
await page.mouse.move(200, 300);
await page.mouse.up();

Rotate IP Addresses

Rotating your IP address is another effective way to avoid being fingerprinted. If you use the same IP address across multiple sessions, websites can easily link your activities together. By rotating IPs, you make it more difficult for websites to track your actions.

You can achieve IP rotation by using proxy services with Puppeteer. Many proxy services offer residential or datacenter proxies, which you can integrate with Puppeteer to change your IP address on each session.

Here’s how to set up a proxy in Puppeteer:

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
args: [' - proxy-server=your-proxy-server:port']
});

Block JavaScript Fingerprinting

Some websites use JavaScript to collect fingerprinting data, such as canvas fingerprinting, WebGL information, or audio context. You can block these scripts by using Puppeteer’s page.setRequestInterception method to intercept and block specific requests.

For example:

await page.setRequestInterception(true);
page.on('request', (request) => {
if (request.resourceType() === 'script') {
request.abort();
} else {
request.continue();
}
});

Blocking scripts can reduce the amount of data that websites can collect about your browser, making it harder for them to create a unique fingerprint.

Spoof Browser Properties

Finally, spoofing browser properties can help you avoid detection. You can use Puppeteer to modify or hide certain properties, such as the navigator object, to make your browser appear less like an automated one.

For example, you can spoof the navigator.webdriver property, which is often used to detect Puppeteer:

await page.evaluateOnNewDocument(() => {
Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'webdriver', {
get: () => false,
});
});

Conclusion

Browser fingerprinting is a powerful tracking technique, and as a regular user of Puppeteer, it’s crucial to mitigate its risks. I incorporate strategies like using stealth plugins, randomizing User-Agent, mimicking human behavior, rotating IPs, blocking fingerprinting scripts, and spoofing browser properties to protect my identity. These steps ensure my Puppeteer sessions remain secure and undetectable, allowing me to perform my tasks confidently.

Want to see other fingerprinting guides? Let me know in the comments!