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Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

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Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#21

Post by Ajedi32 »

josteink wrote: post #11
vorticalbox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

Those permissions have pretty clear use-cases which benefits the user itself and enables things which otherwise wouldn’t be possible. What user-oriented use-cases does this enable which couldn’t have been done otherwise? I really thinks this is apples vs oranges.

Usually the W3C spec for new features like this will contain a few paragraphs outlining intended use cases.

In this case:

> Making these distinctions is important for applications which have the option of delivering notifications across multiple devices, such as a desktop and smartphone. Users may find it frustrating when notifications are delivered to the wrong device or are disruptive. For example, if they switch from a tab containing a messaging application to one for a document they are editing, the messaging application, not being able to observe that the user is still interacting with their device, may assume that they have left to grab a coffee and start delivering notifications to their phone, causing it to buzz distractingly, instead of displaying notifications on their desktop or incrementing a badge count.

Source: https://wicg.github.io/idle-detection/#introduction

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#22

Post by EGreg »

How does Chrome find out?

Is it watching my camera?

Or just no mouse or keyboard activity for a while — because if the latter, my website could already know that.

We built an app for distance learning which put something a lot more invasive (but with permission)… namely eye tracking and facial recognition to see whether the kids are paying attention. It’s actually LESS invasive than the current alternative — requiring the kid to keep their camera on. Now the teacher jusy knows when the kid is present and when not.

Frankly, USA public schooling is about as invasive and controlling for kids as schooling can get. Every minute of their lives inside the school is regimented. So distance learning can be a respite.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#23

Post by CountDrewku »

vfclists wrote: post #16

Says the company which has no intent whatsoever of providing a half decent alternative to Chrome. Instead of designing a system that allows third parties to offer alternative browsers they decided to be selfish and do everything by themselves for themselves, and wonder why their market share continues to plummet. Where is the GeckoView alernative for desktops that would allow their technology further reach?

I've used Firefox for over a decade and a half and haven't ever had a use breaking issue where I felt the need to switch. Where are you getting this idea it's not a viable alternative?

More likely their share is smaller because they're competing against one of the largest companies in the world.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#25

Post by passivate »

CountDrewku wrote: post #23
vfclists wrote: post #16

Says the company which has no intent whatsoever of providing a half decent alternative to Chrome. Instead of designing a system that allows third parties to offer alternative browsers they decided to be selfish and do everything by themselves for themselves, and wonder why their market share continues to plummet. Where is the GeckoView alernative for desktops that would allow their technology further reach?

I've used Firefox for over a decade and a half and haven't ever had a use breaking issue where I felt the need to switch. Where are you getting this idea it's not a viable alternative? More likely their share is smaller because they're competing against one of the largest companies in the world.

Yeah, I'm genuinely puzzled as to where these commenters are coming from. FF is a fantastic product and I have it installed all my devices after moving away from Chrome and Google products. I also managed to convince our IT to ship it as default on all of our company PCs.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#26

Post by detaro »

throwawaynew23 wrote: post #9
vorticalbox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dif…

That's... not a good thing.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#27

Post by sumtechguy »

passivate wrote: post #25
CountDrewku wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Firefox for over a decade and a half and haven't ever had a use breaking issue where I felt the need to switch. Where are you getting this idea it's not a viable alternative? More likely their share is smaller because they're competing against one of the largest companies in the world.

Yeah, I'm genuinely puzzled as to where these commenters are coming from. FF is a fantastic product and I have it installed all my devices after moving away from Chrome and Google products. I also managed to convince our IT to ship it as default on all of our company PCs.

I use both. As an end user the difference is fairly minimal. As dev maybe the debugger is a bit nicer in chrome, but that is just opinion. Also for me in some cases chrome is becoming the new 'IE'. The site will only work in chrome. For my wife if I switched out firefox for chrome I doubt she would even notice.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#28

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #6

I 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.

You know who loves to use this feature? Recaptcha!

When browsing Firefox in Incognito mode with uBlock Origin and uMatrix fully active, the Recaptcha challenges load painfully slowly. Like each picture might take upwards of five seconds to refresh.

And to my delight, I have noticed that if I flip away from that tab while the panels are refreshing, they pause until I bring the tab back into active focus.

It's a slap in the face that this kind of user-hostile design is allowed.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#30

Post by SquareWheel »

judge2020 wrote: post #7

For reference, it requires a permission dialog and the demo is here: https://reillyeon.github.io/scraps/idle.html

Interesting that the minimum threshold is one minute. That might be too long for features like auto-saving documents, but lower-precision probably avoids a lot of nasty use cases too.
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