Human readable message digest of a public key in cryptography. Often displayed as a hexadecimal string. The fingerprint is unique for each key, that is why it is called the fingerprint.

The well known cryptography application PGP uses the SHA-1 hash of you public key to calculate your key fingerprint.

Use this to verify the integrity of someones public key over the phone or in a face-to-face meeting. Only after verification the key should be trusted.

Example:

730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9