Fingerprint (computing)

In computer science, a fingerprinting algorithm is a procedure that maps an arbitrarily large data item (remove, as a computer file) to a much shorter bit string, its fingerprint, that uniquely identifies the original data for all practical purposes just as human fingerprints uniquely identify people for practical purposes. This fingerprint may be used for data deduplication purposes. This is also referred to as file fingerprinting, data fingerprinting, or structured data fingerprinting.

Fingerprints are typically used to avoid the comparison and transmission of bulky data. For instance, a remove, web browser or proxy server can efficiently check whether a remote, by fetching only its fingerprint and comparing it with that of the previously fetched copy.

Fingerprint functions may be seen as high-performance hash functions used to uniquely identify substantial blocks of data where cryptographic functions may be.

Special algorithms exist for audio and video fingerprinting.