Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

howtogeek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#61

Post by halflings »

oblib wrote: post #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…

> Maybe that's why Google doesn't even list my app even though it's one of the longest running "web apps" alive

Is your hypothesis that Google would have some incentive that you collect user interaction data? Why would that be?

> used to be listed #1 when it first came out

Back in 2002. A lot has happened since then. Your app [1] is not comparable to what competitors like Zoho offer. There's plenty of potential reasons for not being ranked higher: from the landing page, to the increase in SaaS competition, to not keeping up with UX trends etc.

[1] https://ezinvoice.com/

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#62

Post by [deleted] »

takeda wrote: post #57
afavour wrote: post #19

I am a privacy-conscious person but I really wish these debates could be a little more nuanced. This API is behind a permission prompt that can only be triggered in response to a user gesture, so the bar to entry is high. The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! IMO I ought to have the ability to cash in some of my privacy chips (so to speak) on a site tha…

> The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! That's exactly how Google uses it. They will make an interesting feature, that absolutely require this to be enabled. It's similar to how to get list of recently watched YouTube video on your phone you need to give permission to Google to log your history, because it's impossible, of course, to store that locally…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#63

Post by _jal »

afavour wrote: post #42
dheera wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> active/away status This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior. Even read receipts in chat apps like Facebook should be able to be disabled by the user. (You can, with some JS injection, but basically that means programmers' privacy is respected and non-programmers' privacy is violated.) Also micromanagement. I once had a coworker who would "pounce" on me when my Slack status became active, instead of respect…

> This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior Well, sure. Any away/active status can be used for bad things. Pretty much any form of text communication can, too. We all opt in and out of things according to our level of comfort, like with the permission prompt this API provides.

Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness?

You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#64

Post by themacguffinman »

_jal wrote: post #63
afavour wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior Well, sure. Any away/active status can be used for bad things. Pretty much any form of text communication can, too. We all opt in and out of things according to our level of comfort, like with the permission prompt this API provides.

Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness? You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.

Seems fine to me if it's opt-in just like the idle-detection API.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#65

Post by atatatat »

takeda wrote: post #57
afavour wrote: post #19

I am a privacy-conscious person but I really wish these debates could be a little more nuanced. This API is behind a permission prompt that can only be triggered in response to a user gesture, so the bar to entry is high. The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! IMO I ought to have the ability to cash in some of my privacy chips (so to speak) on a site tha…

> The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! That's exactly how Google uses it. They will make an interesting feature, that absolutely require this to be enabled. It's similar to how to get list of recently watched YouTube video on your phone you need to give permission to Google to log your history, because it's impossible, of course, to store that locally…

Right, but if I use none of their stack, it doesn't affect me.

There is a bifurcation of people who want to learn about the tech they use every day, and those that don't.

Those that don't can't be saved if they won't grab around for the life raft.

Rest of us still want to build PWAs.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#66

Post by afavour »

_jal wrote: post #63
afavour wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior Well, sure. Any away/active status can be used for bad things. Pretty much any form of text communication can, too. We all opt in and out of things according to our level of comfort, like with the permission prompt this API provides.

Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness? You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.

Why not debate the API that’s in front of us rather than make up excessive imaginary ones?

(besides, payment APIs are already able to request your contact information in order to bill you and ship things to you. And guess what: pretty useful!)

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#67

Post by jrockway »

dheera wrote: post #39
afavour wrote: post #19

I am a privacy-conscious person but I really wish these debates could be a little more nuanced. This API is behind a permission prompt that can only be triggered in response to a user gesture, so the bar to entry is high. The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! IMO I ought to have the ability to cash in some of my privacy chips (so to speak) on a site tha…

> active/away status This can easily be abused for stalkerish behavior. Even read receipts in chat apps like Facebook should be able to be disabled by the user. (You can, with some JS injection, but basically that means programmers' privacy is respected and non-programmers' privacy is violated.) Also micromanagement. I once had a coworker who would "pounce" on me when my Slack status became active, instead of respect…

Yeah, nobody wants presence features. I think it's especially annoying on Discord, because nobody cares which anonymous subset of 1000 users is currently sleeping or awake or has their screensaver going. Most of my friends type at me while they're "offline". Uh huh. (The reason is "I'm avoiding someone", which indicates that the feature is only for evil.)

Slack isn't as bothersome (it doesn't seem to try to detect "stepped away from the computer for 5 minutes", it's just "closed the app for the day" or "has the app open", which is better than Discord), but it's a feature that should totally go away.

Slack's "z" indicator for "outside of work hours" is fine. I will note the irony behind switching to Slack only to have Slackbot send them a "electronic mail" when they get back online ;) If only there was some other system that could send messages to users and have them read them when they feel like it.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#68

Post by iainmerrick »

ghuin wrote: post #55
birthdaydog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sorry! Looks like something went wrong. In order to use our site you'll have to enable idle tracking. This helps us improve our software for customers like you!"

That won't happen as long as Safari doesn't implement the API. For example: notifications

If you’re saying the feature is only OK as long as at least one major browser doesn’t implement it, to prevent it getting traction, I don’t think it’s a good feature.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#69

Post by iainmerrick »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #44
WallyFunk wrote: post #12

Think about it: if a device's gyroscope is left idle, it presumes the behavior of a virtual machine. I imagine trust scores use this as a metric when deciding if the user is human or a machine: `device was left in the same geo-coords for a long period of time`: then it is a bot.

You're assuming mobile only. Laptops don't have gyroscopes.

Hmm, they used to have drop sensors, at least! Or did those go out of fashion with spinning disks?

ISTR the motion sensing web APIs worked on Mac laptops when they were originally added (then later stopped working, either intentionally or through neglect).

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#70

Post by [deleted] »

afavour wrote: post #66
_jal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not add an API to allow servers to request your contact information and creditworthiness? You can just opt out if you're not comfortable with it.

Why not debate the API that’s in front of us rather than make up excessive imaginary ones? (besides, payment APIs are already able to request your contact information in order to bill you and ship things to you. And guess what: pretty useful!)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN