ways to detect a computer

Question

What are the ways to detect a computer other than ip address.

I saw some bux website where they do not store ip addresses but detects computers. How this is possible? Do this a program, or any other?

Is this in anyway related to cookies, or mayby something else?

A web application automatically detects computers using something other than an IP address. What could it be?

It seems like you might be asking the same thing as these two questions; you might try looking here to see if any of the answers would work for you: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1331046/uniquely-identify-one-computer http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5048066/how-to-uniquely-identify-a-computer — Aaron, Feb 28 '11 at 19:36
Can you provide a URL to the website you're interested in? Otherwise you're asking us how a hypothetical site does the not particularly clearly specified operation of 'detects computers' - not really a question we can answer. It could be cookies, it could be a program, it could even be other. — James Gaunt, Feb 28 '11 at 19:38
Are you trying to avoid spam spiders and such? i.e. computer programs that post crap in forums and html forms? — jgauffin, Feb 28 '11 at 19:40
Are you sure you don't mean Identify computers, rather than detect? — capdragon, Feb 28 '11 at 19:42
@Everyone: See, there are some websites that allows to login only from one computer never never from another.. In such sites you can create only 1 account and it stores your system details and do not allow you to further signup. Though if 100 systems are connected using a single IP address it allows users to create an individual accounts from every computer. It noway depends on IP address but it stores some other details of your system and block your singup access to create a newuser from the same system. — Karthik Malla, Feb 28 '11 at 20:15
@Everyone: I worked on search sites for several months and developing such a one.! And thanks for your comments. — Karthik Malla, Feb 28 '11 at 20:17

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 28 '11 at 19:34

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Sniff network traffic and see what computers are communicating.

This was easier when network hubs were used. Now days network switches only direct traffic to the devices that are actually communicating.

answered Feb 28 '11 at 19:34

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

If the clients are outside your local network, there is really no way to get 100% reliable machine identification. MAC addresses aren't send as part of normal page requests, and IP addresses are subject to change, NAT translation, proxying, etc. Most likely the closest you can come is by setting a cookie on the client's machine, but they'll have to a) accept the cookie, and b) not change or delete it. I don't know whether that will fit your situation.

If you're willing to require your clients to use IE, and if they trust you enough to let you create ActiveX objects, you can capture the client's MAC Address using the WMI scripting library.

For a little further reading, check out this Stack Overflow question.

ways to detect a computer

2 Answers2