Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
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Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#2"As you might expect, developers love this new feature—anything that can provide them with more information regarding how users are interacting with their apps is a positive."
Here I am deliberately designing apps that track no user interaction data at all. Maybe that's why Google doesn't even list my app even though it's one of the longest running "web apps" alive and used to be listed #1 when it first came out. Now they have more ads for similar apps than search results on a search results page.
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#3As long as you're asked for permission I don't see the problem
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#4As long as you're asked for permission I don't see the problem
This is what I was just thinking. It asks for permission just like microphone or location.
Both of which you could argue 'allow for surveillance'
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#5Imagine if Mozilla spent even one tenth the amount of effort on their own crappy product as they do hand-wringing about Chrome. We might have another viable web browser.
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#6I already don't really like how websites can detect whether a tab is active or not (perhaps because callbacks/timers get delayed when a tab is inactive?). For example, dslreports's speedtest fails your measurement if you switch tabs, and Duo's web 2FA interface fails to approve a device which you've set to remember for 30 days if you're in a different tab.
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#7For reference, it requires a permission dialog and the demo is here: https://reillyeon.github.io/scraps/idle.html
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#8Imagine if Mozilla spent even one tenth the amount of effort on their own crappy product as they do hand-wringing about Chrome. We might have another viable web browser.
The quote the article is based around is discussing a new web API in the context of deciding what Mozilla thinks about it. If Mozilla isn't going to have any opinions on new web APIs, then what is even the point of Firefox? (Disclaimer, I work on Firefox but I know anything about specs.)
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#9As long as you're asked for permission I don't see the problem
This is what I was just thinking. It asks for permission just like microphone or location. Both of which you could argue 'allow for surveillance'
Students last year were complaining about Respondus, and it’s privacy invasive nature, now chrome supports features similar to it. In response to this my school allowed teachers to give easier tests to students using Respondus since they could be sure they weren’t cheating and allowed more complicated tests to be made for those refusing to use Respondus. Maybe with this they’ll recommend chrome and allow a medium difficultly test to be provided to those students.
Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance
#10I already don't really like how websites can detect whether a tab is active or not (perhaps because callbacks/timers get delayed when a tab is inactive?). For example, dslreports's speedtest fails your measurement if you switch tabs, and Duo's web 2FA interface fails to approve a device which you've set to remember for 30 days if you're in a different tab.
There are a few ways to do it. First is document.hidden but that's the simplest monkey patch ever. Pass through iframe can detect some monkey patches though. visibilitychange too.
you're right! at least before it was somewhat mitigated I think?, you can measure timing Chrome used to slow down inactive tabs with rounded ms I believe I'd have to check the fingerprinting JS i wrote a few years ago.
Mouse movement is a good one too.
I'm sure there are other hacks maybe onfocus the entire window and poll it.
IntersectionObserver sounds like a good thread, there is a good polyfill library too.