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Show HN: What every browser knows about you

webkay.robinlinus.com

101–110 of 209 posts

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#101

> Your Device is propably laying on a Table I'm one of those heathens that actually puts the desktop tower on top of the desk. Got me.

Your desktop has a gyroscope?

No, and the website reported as such. I guess if you have no motion/orientation sensors of any kind it just guesses it's on a table.

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your desktop has a gyroscope?

No, and the website reported as such. I guess if you have no motion/orientation sensors of any kind it just guesses it's on a table.

Sorry for the confusion. Don't take this interpretation too serious. It just for fun ;)

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#104
post #97
post #78

@Capira since you're so readily fixing things based on comments (awesome), here's another one. You write "To prevent your browser from accessing your Device Orientation use NoScript." under the Network Scan section. Looks like copy / pasta.

Thanks for the Feedback! Fixed. ;)

Nice, thanks!

Amazing project!

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#105
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some really cool uses of webrtc data channels. e.g. https://webtorrent.io/

Yeah, and that's also a great example of what should NOT be allowed without the user's EXPLICIT permission - simply visiting a link should not result in a torrent download!

Simply visiting a link downloads dozens, sometimes hundreds of files without your explicit permissions. It simply uses a different protocol.

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#106
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some really cool uses of webrtc data channels. e.g. https://webtorrent.io/

Yeah, and that's also a great example of what should NOT be allowed without the user's EXPLICIT permission - simply visiting a link should not result in a torrent download!

Simply visiting a YouTube link should result in the video to start streaming right away though?

How will you know that a download is desired or not?

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#107
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should leave it in, if the whole point is to demonstrate the capabilities. It's incredible that a webpage can do that.

I think a button would be more appropriate. Not everyone reads HN on a network they control and port scanning one's neighbors can lead to some unpleasant conversations.

Maybe it's good that more conversations around this are started so that eventually this critique is upstreamed loud enough to the browser vendors.

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#108
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and that's also a great example of what should NOT be allowed without the user's EXPLICIT permission - simply visiting a link should not result in a torrent download!

Simply visiting a link downloads dozens, sometimes hundreds of files without your explicit permissions. It simply uses a different protocol.

No, it doesn't just use a different protocol. It ignores your network settings (proxy) and exposes your local network information.

I can understand not wanting to scare people with "Allow P2P Data Channel", but ignoring proxy settings and revealing all IPs is unacceptable. WebRTC folks toss off these concerns with "there's no way to prevent tracking so heh".

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#109
post #106
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and that's also a great example of what should NOT be allowed without the user's EXPLICIT permission - simply visiting a link should not result in a torrent download!

Simply visiting a YouTube link should result in the video to start streaming right away though? How will you know that a download is desired or not?

tags are a more standardized part of the web. Although I should be able to disable auto-buffering as well as auto-play.

Ideally the user can control whether all types of content get loaded—images, CSS, JavaScript, web fonts—or even allow/deny individual domains or files, but so far browsers require an extension like uMatrix for that.

Re: Show HN: What every browser knows about you

#110

After checking out the demo, it was scary to realize that websites can access an unexpectedly large amount of information about me. So I installed Tor with the Noscript addon and the demo was not able to access any details at all. Well it did show my ISP and hardware details, but it was wrong. This should be the default setup in a browser, Tor+Noscript. The issues of constant captcha harassment and slow browsing spee…

>This should be the default setup in a browser, Tor+Noscript.

That's just unrealistic for most people, especially the TOR recommendation. Script blockers are troublesome even for tech savvy individuals, though I highly recommend blocking scripts for anyone who can "handle it". Gorhill's work (via uBlock Origin) provides a much more realistic way of disabling these kinds of malicious and/or invasive actions. Not sure if they're currently blocked, but he's made strides to block crapware and its kin, so this might not be so far off.

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