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Changelog

Every update, improvement, and fix — in one place. We ship constantly. Here's what's been happening.

May 2026 32 updates
Mobile NAT64 false positive: French/EU mobile users no longer flagged as routing anomaly
When a device has a native IPv6 address (CF dual-stack) but Spur's monocle endpoint is IPv4-only, the OS routes through the carrier's NAT64 gateway — creating an apparent IP mismatch that previously triggered routingAnomaly = true (amber 50, ANOMALY on VPN/Proxy row). Common on Orange, SFR, and Bouygues mobile in France. Server now detects the IPv6→IPv4 split and classifies it as mobile dual-stack: uses the IPv4 as the display IP (covered by Spur's intelligence DB), clears the route-mismatch widget, and returns score 0 / CLEAN. Same-version mismatches (IPv4↔IPv4) still flag amber since those are consistent with rotating residential proxies.
Scanner widget: Network Intel grid no longer stuck at “…” on routing anomaly path
The routing anomaly branch in showScannerResult() returned early before calling setDetail(), leaving VPN / Proxy / Datacenter / Tor Exit / Country / Risk Score all frozen on the loading ellipsis. The early return now populates all six fields (CLEAR for network flags, country flag + code, amber 50 for risk score) and calls resolveDeviceFallback() so the Device Intelligence row also fills from server-side UA data.
Scanner mobile overflow: ISP / Service and VPN / Proxy values no longer clipped off-screen
Long IPv6 addresses (38+ chars) caused the scanner widget to expand horizontally beyond the viewport on mobile, pushing the right-side values of ISP/Service and VPN/Proxy rows off-screen. Three CSS fixes: overflow:hidden on .scanner-widget clips any overflow; min-width:0; word-break:break-all; flex-shrink:1 on .result-row-val lets flex items shrink and wrap; align-items:flex-start on .result-row handles multi-line IP values. Route mismatch JS also fixed: replaced <br> inside inline-flex (broken) with a proper column layout, and fixed mojibake ↳ arrow.
Scanner result message: HTML entities rendering as literal text
msg.textContent does not parse HTML entities, so “Verified residential &mdash; you&rsquo;re clean.” and “Analysing connection&hellip;” were displayed verbatim with the entity codes visible. Replaced with actual Unicode characters (em dash, right single quotation mark, ellipsis). ISP/Service logo chip also fixed: generic names (Mobile ISP, Residential ISP, Mismatched route, etc.) no longer render a fallback “M” initial chip — unrecognized brand names are now shown as plain text only.
Mojibake: ▌ cursor character in “How It Works” code blocks
The blinking cursor character ▌ (U+258C, LEFT HALF BLOCK) in the three “How It Works” terminal code snippets was double-encoded as Windows-1252, displaying as â–Œ across all browsers. Replaced all three instances with the correct UTF-8 character.
Mobile performance: font weight pruned, content-visibility, preconnect
Three performance improvements targeting mobile first-paint. (1) Dropped Space Grotesk weight 300 from the Google Fonts request — not used in any CSS rule, saves ~8 KB of font transfer on every cold load. (2) Added content-visibility:auto with contain-intrinsic-size to .value-props, .features-section, and .proof-section — browser skips off-screen layout and paint on first render, measurably reducing LCP on long pages. (3) Upgraded flagcdn.com from dns-prefetch to preconnect, eliminating the full DNS + TCP + TLS handshake before the first flag image renders in the scanner.
Mobile menu redesigned: clean dark overlay with chevron links and neutral CTA buttons
The mobile hamburger menu was restyled to match the site’s aesthetic. Navigation links: white text at 1rem / 600 weight with a right-side chevron arrow, replacing the dim uppercase small-caps. CTA row: LOG IN renders as a muted bordered pill, GET STARTED as a solid white / black button — removing the harsh neon lime that clashed with the dark overlay and was flagged as visually inconsistent with the auth page button redesign.
4 new blog posts: card testing, CAPTCHA farms, loyalty fraud, gaming launches
Four production-ready posts shipped to the blog. Card Testing Attacks covers the full bot operation — proxy routing, antidetect browsers, timing randomization, economics ($5–$50 per live card) — and shows exactly why Stripe Radar alone is insufficient. CAPTCHA Farm Economics documents the $0.0005–$0.002/solve market, how reCAPTCHA v3 gets gamed with warmed profiles, and why CAPTCHA is now only a deterrent against the least sophisticated bots. Loyalty Point Fraud maps dark-market valuations ($0.004–$0.012/mile), all four attack vectors, and a Python integration example. Bots at Product Launches breaks down waitlist hoarding, referral self-referral, SaaS trial stacking, and sneaker-drop scalping with real data. All posts include Article + FAQ + BreadcrumbList schema, newsletter capture, and related-article cross-links.
2 new case studies: iGaming bonus abuse + travel scalper bots
Two full illustrative case studies added. EU Sportsbook — iGaming Bonus Abuse: professional bonus hunters using Dolphin Anty + Bright Data residential proxies drained €1.8M in GGR before Sentinel's antidetect detection and device clustering caught the pattern in 48 hours. European OTA — Travel Scalper Bots: Playwright-driven inventory-hoarding bots crashed checkout conversion to 34%; Sentinel's headless artifact detection, ASN classification, and form-fill timing signals shut down the operation without adding CAPTCHA friction. Case-studies index updated with both cards; aggregate stat raised from $2.4M to $7M+.
Blog UX: category filter bar + reading time badges + card glow hover
Blog index redesigned with three UX upgrades. A sticky filter bar above the grid lets visitors filter by category (Guide, Research, Case Study, Analysis, Deep Dive, Engineering, Industry) — pure client-side JS reading tag text, zero server round-trips. Reading time badges auto-inject into every card footer via a lookup map (7–13 min estimates). Card hover effect gains a subtle accent glow (box-shadow: 0 0 0 1px rgba(204,255,0,0.12)) alongside the existing lift animation. Article count updated to 34.
Device Intelligence loads immediately — removed 3-second artificial delay
The Fingerprint SDK lazy-loader was wrapped in setTimeout(load, 3000) as a safety throttle. Since loadDeviceIntel already awaits the SDK promise, the timeout just stalled the DI panel for 3 full seconds on every dashboard open — even on fast connections. Changed to load() (immediate). Client-side fetch to /api/device-intel now has AbortSignal.timeout(8000) so the DI panel fails gracefully instead of hanging if the upstream Fingerprint API is slow.
bcrypt async in OAuth flow; guard.js 7-day immutable cache; crypto hot-path fix
Three server-side performance wins. bcrypt: Google OAuth new-user creation used bcrypt.hashSync inside a db callback, synchronously blocking the event loop on every first-time Google login. Replaced with await bcrypt.hash() in an async callback. guard.js: Cache-Control changed from no-store to public, max-age=604800, immutable — saves a round-trip on every page load. crypto: parseUaIntel was calling require('crypto') on every invocation; changed to use the module-level crypto import.
XSS fix: escape IP and service name before innerHTML injection on scanner
Three innerHTML assignments on the index.html scanner injected raw values from Cloudflare headers (cfIp), Spur's IP routing (spurIp), and Spur's service name (cleanService) without sanitization. Added a local esc() helper (textContent trick) and applied it to all three sites. Also added DNS prefetch hints for Fingerprint CDN and DuckDuckGo favicons to shave ~20ms off first-load.
Admin key moved to sessionStorage; 2FA pending guard; regex hardening; npm CVE patched
Four security fixes shipped together. Admin persistence: admin key stored in localStorage survived browser restarts; moved to sessionStorage so it clears on tab close. 2FA bypass: /api/2fa/setup didn't check pending2fa on the JWT — a user mid-2FA login could call setup with their half-token. Added guard. Country code: country.length === 2 accepted "00" and numeric strings; tightened to /^[a-zA-Z]{2}$/.test(). npm: npm audit fix patched GHSA-v2v4-37r5-5v8g (ip-address CVE via @libsql/client); audit now reports 0 vulnerabilities.
Blog index updated: 34 posts, JSON-LD refreshed, case-studies $7M+ aggregate
Blog hero stat updated from 16 → 34 articles reflecting the full post fleet. JSON-LD BlogPosting list includes all new posts. Case-studies/index.html aggregate stat raised from $2.4M+ to $7M+ to account for the two new scenarios. BiDi unicode character injection vector patched in display_name PATCH endpoint — characters are now stripped server-side before write.
4 new blog posts: ATO playbook, iGaming bonus abuse, headless detection, agentic AI browsers
Shipped four long-form pieces targeting fresh high-intent keywords. Account Takeover Prevention: The 2026 Engineering Playbook covers session-cookie theft, real-time phishing kits, and device-bound sessions. iGaming Bonus Abuse Detection targets sportsbook/casino multi-account fraud with UKGC/MGA regulatory framing. Headless Browser Detection in 2026 documents what works after stealth plugins kill the classical signals. Detecting Agentic AI Browsers covers ChatGPT Atlas, Claude Computer Use, OpenAI Operator, and the policy decision every team needs to make about AI traffic. Each post ships with Article + FAQ + BreadcrumbList schema and inline links into the existing post graph.
Sitemap, llms.txt, and blog-index refreshed
Added the 4 new posts to sitemap.xml with priority 0.95 and a May lastmod. Bumped homepage, blog index, and changelog lastmod to 2026-05-09 so Google and Bing recrawl. Refreshed /llms.txt with the new posts surfaced for ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity citation discovery, plus an expanded "Capabilities" block that explicitly names ChatGPT Atlas / Claude Computer Use detection. Updated blog-index BlogPosting JSON-LD list with the new headlines.
Internal linking pass — every new post gets 3 inbound contextual links
The four new posts each link into the existing post graph (residential proxies, antidetect browsers, credential stuffing, multi-accounting, Puppeteer/Playwright, AI takeovers) with relevant anchor text rather than navigation-style "read more". Improves crawl depth into the deeper posts and concentrates topical relevance for the cluster keywords. Reciprocal Related-Articles cards added to each new post pointing back at the cluster.
Newsletter capture on every new blog post
"Fraud Brief" newsletter block injected near the article CTA on all 4 new posts. Inline form posts to /api/newsletter with deduplication, fires generate_lead in GA4 on success. Same pattern as the existing post fleet — consistent capture surface across the blog.
Topical cluster expansion: bot detection, ATO, multi-accounting
The blog now has 30 indexed posts across three reinforced clusters: bot & automation (headless, Puppeteer/Playwright, agentic AI, antidetect, captcha-less), network & identity (residential proxies, VPN evasion, ShadowNode, Tor), and platform vertical (iGaming, OAuth signup, ticketing, dating, Stripe, Shopify, fintech, e-commerce, SaaS). Cluster cross-linking is what moves long-tail rankings — each new post strengthens 2–3 existing posts.
Coverage of agentic AI traffic — first-mover content
"Detecting Agentic AI Browsers" is the first piece in our category to address ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI Operator, and Claude Computer Use as a distinct traffic class with a documented detection surface and a policy framework (block / allow-attribute / explicit-agent-path). Targets a query cluster ("detect chatgpt atlas", "block ai agent traffic", "operator bot detection") with essentially zero established competition as of May 2026.
Smarter VPN/proxy verdicts using dch as ground truth
The scanner now uses Spur's datacenter-ASN flag (dch) to distinguish stale-cache verdicts from real VPN traffic. Matched IPs + vpn=true + residential ASN → CLEAN (cache residue from a previous VPN session). Route mismatch + datacenter ASN → DETECTED (real VPN exit even if Spur's IP DB doesn't have it pinned by name). Eliminates the false-PROTON-VPN labels on residential IPs after VPN toggles, and catches real VPN exits Spur's per-IP database hasn't ingested yet.
Live scanner: RESCAN button + cache-busting
Added a one-click RESCAN action in the scanner card header. Wipes localStorage, sessionStorage, cookies, and IndexedDB entries for Spur/monocle/mcl namespaces, then reloads with a unique ?_rescan=<ts> query so no cache layer (browser disk, BFCache, service worker, Cloudflare edge) can serve stale state. /api/verify calls now also send a fresh nonce per request and explicit cache: 'no-store'.
Route mismatch surfaced in network row
When Spur's edge sees a different visitor IP than what reaches our origin via Cloudflare (Brave + Proton TCP routing splits, CF WARP, etc.), the panel now shows both IPs stacked: A.B.C.D via CF + ↳ X.Y.Z.W via Spur (VPN exit). The split itself is recorded, and the verdict reflects the underlying ASN signals rather than guessing.
Scanner can no longer hang on "Analysing now"
The legacy two-state machine had no exit when Spur returned scanInconclusive=true twice. Bot poll now waits the full 4-second window and uses the LATEST monocle token (catches Spur's mid-window assessment refresh). Master 5-second safety timeout force-resolves if anything else stalls. Loading panel cross-fade switched from absolute positioning to CSS grid stacking — no more overflow behind the scanner foot when the details panel expands.
Fingerprint Pro account migration → custom subdomain fa.sntlhq.com
Swapped the Fingerprint device-intelligence integration to a new account and a Cloudflare-backed custom subdomain. Bypasses ad-blocker tracker lists by default. CDN fallback chain: fa.sntlhq.comfpjscdn.net/v4 if DNS hasn't propagated. API endpoints list both subdomain and eu.api.fpjs.io in priority order. Applied across all 8 pages that load the agent.
Dark editorial homepage restored, fingerprint.com experiment reverted
A short-lived white "fingerprint.com / sift.com" redesign clashed with the rest of the site (login, signup, dashboard, contact all run dark Space Grotesk + neon green). Restored the editorial dark theme so the homepage and post-signup flows share one visual system. Added a centered "Customer Voice" testimonial block with the residential-proxy quote, styled to match the existing crosshair / grid-overlay language.
Fingerprint loader no longer hangs Device Intel on blocked browsers
When Brave Shields, Proton NetShield, or strict uBlock dropped the Fingerprint agent, the Device Intel rows were stuck on SCANNING… indefinitely. Hard 3-second timeout now resolves the row to a neutral state. Verify endpoint distinguishes "SDK genuinely blocked" (private/missing IP) from "stale public IP" so the panel paints an honest verdict either way.
Loading-state placeholders are loading-state-shaped
Detection signal rows used to ship as a literal ", " empty value, which read as broken-rendered output if a visitor opened the details panel during the bot-poll window. Replaced all 12 placeholders with "…" so the loading state reads as loading.
Smoother scanner cross-fade and row reveal
Loading→result transition uses cubic-bezier(0.22, 1, 0.36, 1) easing on opacity and Y-translate. Score-circle pops with a soft bounce. Result rows cascade in at 40/100/160/220 ms. Detail-grid items fade in staggered when the panel expands. Header colour swaps go through 0.4 s eased transitions instead of instant — feels like a polished SaaS product, not a 90s page reload.
FINGERPRINT_SECRET_KEY rotation
Server-side device-intel calls now use the new Fingerprint account's secret. Read from Railway env, never committed. Server CSP script-src, worker-src, and connect-src directives updated to allow the new fa.sntlhq.com subdomain alongside fpjscdn.net and eu.api.fpjs.io.
Customer voice section on the homepage
Added a centered testimonial block above the final CTA: residential-proxy detection drove the integration ROI in week three for a Series-A fintech. Styled in the editorial DM Mono / neon-green typography to match the rest of the site, with crosshair markers and a grid overlay matching the comparison and CTA bands.
April 2026 21 updates
Mobile polish — duplicate logo fix, overflow cleanup
Removed the duplicate Sentinel logo that appeared on /login and /signup on phones (top-bar + split-panel brand rendered twice). Fixed horizontal overflow on the blog listing for small screens — comparison-table text scales down instead of clipping, CTA buttons stack full-width, tight containers no longer push content past the viewport on ≤420 px devices.
4 new blog posts targeting high-intent keywords
Added Stripe Fraud Detection API, Shopify Bot Detection, OAuth Signup Fraud, and How to Detect Residential Proxies in 2026. Each ships with Article + FAQ + BreadcrumbList schema, internal links to related posts, and its own canonical + OG cards.
BreadcrumbList schema across all 21 blog posts
Every blog post now emits BreadcrumbList JSON-LD alongside the existing Article and FAQPage schemas. Qualifies every post for breadcrumb rich snippets in Google SERPs and tightens site-wide structured-data coverage.
Dashboard + login load: instant first paint
Dashboard-init now fires from <head> before scripts parse (saves 50-200 ms cold) and stale-while-revalidate paints cached state instantly on returning visits. Redundant /api/user 2FA fetch removed. Device-intel call now uses requestIdleCallback. Login page preconnects accounts.google.com and prefetches /dashboard.
Dashboard chart redesign — SVG line + area with tooltip
Replaced stacked bars with a smooth SVG line + gradient-area chart for Clean vs. Threat traffic. Crosshair + floating tooltip on hover and tap. Skeleton shimmers while loading. Stronger empty states on the chart and the Recent Activity table. Staggered card fade-up, threat-row edge indicator, tighter row hover — all respecting prefers-reduced-motion.
Four dashboard bugs fixed
1. Chart range selector now re-renders with full 30-day window (server returned 14). 2. Playground validates the Spur token before firing so late SDK loads don't send empty requests. 3. Date-group headers in Recent Activity no longer orphaned after filtering. 4. Row hover moved from inline onmouseover to CSS :hover — no flicker on filter changes.
Typography + mobile polish sitewide
"API & Docs" renamed to "API Docs" across all 43 pages — the ampersand glyph under uppercase rendered visibly heavier than neighbouring nav items. Footer links dropped text-transform:uppercase so "IP Lookup" and "Integrations" read cleanly. Added a 400-px breakpoint for tiny phones; CTA buttons stack full-width; footer columns wrap to two-across.
X + LinkedIn footer links + SEO meta on legal pages
Visible X (Twitter) and LinkedIn SVG icons injected into the footer across 44 marketing pages. Added OG + Twitter card + Organization sameAs schema to integrations, privacy, terms, cookies, login, signup, and forgot-password. Removed noindex from legal pages — they were in the sitemap but blocked from indexing, inconsistent SEO signal now resolved.
Scanner IP check: trust Spur's token, fall back only on failure
Reverted an over-aggressive IP override that was masking legitimate VPN / proxy results. The scanner now trusts Spur's decrypted token as the source of truth for IP, country, and VPN/proxy flags — which reflects the client's actual connection at scan time. CF-Connecting-IP is used only when the token couldn't resolve (antidetect browser blocking the SDK). Result: toggling VPN on/off now shows correctly every time.
12-point security hardening — secrets, auth, 2FA
Removed all hardcoded secrets from source code. Face login now requires server-verified FaceTec liveness check. Admin endpoint uses separate key with constant-time comparison. 2FA setup requires password re-auth. eventId validation blocks SSRF. Scan IDs use crypto.randomBytes.
Core Web Vitals overhaul — 6 optimizations
FaceTec SDK (1.97 MB) lazy-loaded on demand instead of blocking page render. Fingerprint Pro deferred to first user interaction. Blog hero images preloaded with explicit dimensions. Shared CSS extracted to external cacheable files — 136 KB of duplicated inline CSS removed across 31 pages. Google Tag Manager moved out of critical rendering path.
WCAG compliance — focus indicators, skip-link, form labels
Global :focus-visible accent outlines on all interactive elements. Skip-to-content link on every page. Contact form labels properly associated with inputs. Heading hierarchy violations fixed.
Custom 404 page + branded error handling
Unknown routes now return a branded 404 page with popular destination links instead of a raw text error. API routes return structured JSON errors.
Blog: How Residential Proxies Bypass Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode
New analysis piece covering the three specific bypasses (clean ASN, real TLS fingerprints, valid JS execution) and why detection must move from the network layer to the device layer.
SEO audit — 16 title truncations fixed, all JSON-LD validated
Shortened 16 page titles and 13 meta descriptions to avoid Google SERP truncation. Validated all 50 structured data blocks site-wide — zero errors. Case study Article schemas fixed with missing required fields.
Accessibility improvements across all pages
Added <main> landmarks to all pages, removed user-scalable viewport restrictions, and improved ARIA labels across 34 pages for better screen reader and keyboard navigation support.
Mobile PageSpeed 79 → 93 via async font loading
Switched Google Fonts to non-blocking async preload across all pages. Mobile PageSpeed score improved from 79 to 93, reducing render-blocking resources and improving LCP on low-bandwidth connections.
CSP headers hardened, Mozilla Observatory score → A
Fixed Content Security Policy headers to properly allowlist Google Ads and GTM. Added Permissions-Policy header to disable the deprecated FLEDGE API. Mozilla Observatory security score improved to A.
3 new high-volume blog posts published
Published "IP Reputation API Guide", "Device Fingerprinting API", and "Proxy Detection" — targeting high-volume search keywords with 1K–10K monthly searches. All pages include structured data and optimized meta.
OTP email redesign with individual digit boxes
Redesigned OTP verification emails with a cleaner layout featuring individual digit boxes for each character. Improved visual hierarchy and copy to reduce confusion during the signup flow.
Google OAuth now uses proper RS256 JWKS signature verification
Replaced insecure base64 token decoding with cryptographically verified RS256 JWKS signature verification for Google OAuth tokens. Tokens are now validated against Google's public key endpoint on every auth request.
HSTS preload, CORP headers, and CSP violation reporting
Added HSTS preload directive, Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy header, and a CSP violation reporting endpoint to capture and monitor any policy breaches in production.
March 2026 5 updates
Organization schema added to homepage
Added JSON-LD Organization schema markup to the homepage, including name, URL, logo, contact point, and social profiles. Improves Google Knowledge Graph presence and enables rich results in search.
Footer expanded to 4-column layout
Redesigned the site-wide footer with a 4-column layout including dedicated sections for comparison pages (/vs/), industry landing pages (/for/), legal, and platform links. Improves internal linking for SEO.
5 competitor comparison pages launched
Launched dedicated comparison pages for vs IPQS, vs SEON, vs Sift, vs Kount, and vs minFraud. Each page includes an objective feature matrix, pricing comparison, and Sentinel's advantages.
4 industry landing pages launched
Launched tailored landing pages for SaaS, Fintech, E-Commerce, and Gaming verticals. Each page addresses the specific fraud vectors and use cases relevant to that industry with targeted CTAs.
10 SEO blog posts covering modern fraud vectors
Published 10 in-depth blog posts covering antidetect browsers, credential stuffing, proxy evasion, threat intelligence, and residential proxy abuse. Total indexed blog content now at 15 posts.
February 2026 4 updates
Migrated to Turso cloud database
Replaced local SQLite with Turso cloud database for persistent, multi-region storage. Eliminates data loss on container restarts and enables low-latency reads across global edge locations.
Rate limiting with per-IP and per-endpoint controls
Added configurable rate limiting across all API endpoints. Controls are applied per IP and per endpoint independently, with exponential backoff headers returned on limit breach.
New /api/device-intel endpoint launched
Launched /api/device-intel combining Fingerprint.js smart signals with Spur network intelligence. Returns a unified risk score with device-level and network-level signals in a single call.
Open Beta — 10,000 requests/month, free, no card required
Sentinel entered public Open Beta. All features available for free with a limit of 10,000 API requests per month. No credit card required to sign up. Rate limits apply to prevent abuse.
January 2026 3 updates
Closed alpha with first 50 testers
Ran a closed alpha with 50 hand-picked testers from SaaS, fintech, and e-commerce backgrounds. Feedback directly shaped the v1 API schema, response format, and signal set.
Infrastructure setup on Railway with Cloudflare CDN and DNSSEC
Initial production infrastructure deployed on Railway with Cloudflare as CDN and DNS provider. DNSSEC enabled on the sntlhq.com domain. Global edge caching configured for static assets.
Sentinel founded
Started building the fraud detection API we wished existed — one that catches residential proxies, antidetect browsers, and bot farms that every legacy vendor misses. Day zero.