How to uniquely identify a computer?

Question

Is there any way to 'grab' some personalized ID, INFO, NAME, NUMBER, DATA, etc.?

Anything just to differentiate and recognize two or more PC on the same IP: something like the Computer name of the user besides $_SESSION?

None of these work:

$hostname = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
php_uname('n');
php_uname();

This seems similar, in principle, to the question: [Uniquely identify one computer (tagged 'php')](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1331046/uniquely-identify-one-computer), but not an exact duplicate. — David Thomas, Feb 19 '11 at 00:48

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:57

11

Well, you won't be able to do this from only the HTTP request, but you do have at your disposal the following techniques:

Remote Address
Cookies/Session
User Agent
Client-side Web Technologies (e.g. Java or Flash or Silverlight object)

Basically, you can use the concepts of Evercookie to identifiy a client. That being said, why not just use a login system?

answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:57

John Gietzen

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I like this answer because it shows forward thinking rather than saying 'trust me, don't do this'. – halfpastfour.am Jan 07 '16 at 13:31
https://app.bitsgap.com/trading, doing this well. but don't know what they are using. – kamlesh gorasiya Jul 26 '20 at 12:14
@halfpastfour.am me too i want people who say let us look at possibilities not that cannot be done. – webs Mar 20 '22 at 13:26

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:47

9

No.

(At least not without the users' explicit cooperation.)

answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:47

Oliver Charlesworth

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I thought about answering, but I just couldn't bring myself to do so. +1 for having the balls to 'just say no.' =) – David Thomas Feb 19 '11 at 00:51
@David @Oli :) I realized that, but I had hope... I'll try to create a jQuery cookie with some sort of generated ID ('time' or something) and pass it to a php string that in combination with the user IP something like: `$userId = md5(getenv(REMOTE_ADDR).''.$cookieTime);` and store this into a temp file on the server. :| Is that ok? :) – Roko C. Buljan Feb 19 '11 at 14:29
and what if i have user cooperation? – Arun Sharma Apr 09 '15 at 15:14

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:57

3

There's plenty of information that can be used to create a browser 'fingerprint', but nothing that's guaranteed to be unique. You can find a list of the various data point at the Panopticlick site.

answered Feb 19 '11 at 00:57

Tim Lytle

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 01 '17 at 18:38

0

You can try to use OCS inventory! http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/en/

answered Feb 01 '17 at 18:38

Marco

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How to uniquely identify a computer?

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