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Digital fingerprinting firm Trustev has developed new technology that it claims could stop online trolls and abusive commenters for good. The software uses more than 1,000 data points to ensure that when a user is banned from commenting they remain banned forever.

First developed to prevent ecommerce fraud, Trustev's system looks at everything from monitor size to browser version and even how a user moves their mouse to create a unique fingerprint. Each user account is linked to one of these fingerprints, making it easy to stop abusive commenters setting up additional accounts.


A major US-based multinational will announce it is using the Trustev for Publishers platform within weeks and talks are ongoing with major media companies in the UK and Ireland.

Trustev CEO Pat Phelan told WIRED.co.uk that rather than blacklisting an email or IP address, the new system created a detailed digital fingerprint of each user to make it easy for websites to ban trolls and abusive commenters for good. "We're looking at over 1,000 data points when someone sets up an account," he said. "This is not about blocking free speech, it's about enabling speech."

Trustev is able to look at data such as location, proxies, devices, browser IDs, email address, phone number, social network accounts and system settings to build a detailed profile of each user signed up to post comments using its service.

The system, which can be added to websites in a similar way to existing services such as Disqus, isn't free for publishers to use but the cost is scaleable. Phelen said that publishers are charged based on the number of people signed up, with costs in "decimals of a cent" per user. He explained that the technology to ban online commenters was the same as that used to stop ecommerce fraud, the only difference being the transactional part has been removed. "I've been a blogger for years. When I started comments were as powerful as the blog itself," Phelan claimed. He said that over the past couple of years many websites had disabled comments altogether as trolls, spammers and abusive posters made it impossible for discussions to take place.

Trustev for Publishers is available now, with the first batch of customers using the platform set to be announced within weeks.