Cute detail: if you switch to another tab and then back again it shows a banner at the top:
> You left for 6.3 seconds. We noticed.
A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
221–230 of 309 posts
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#222Maybe it's just because I am old, or have worked on internet software for almost 30 years, but none of this seems surprising or even concerning? Someone sets up a server that accepts connections to it and then someone sends a connection request to it. There has been no agreement on anything, no expectations or rules established. No one forces the server to accept any connection request it gets, and no one forces some…
Someone sets up a server that accepts connections to it and then someone sends a connection request to it. My disappointment is not with websites. It is with browsers. They have continuously prioritized dark pattern support. They have consistently removed user control. I mean it's not the websites that default to recording every keystroke, default to tracker persistence, default to phoning home with daily telemetry,…
None of the information on the website I would argue is a dark pattern. The remote server knows my IP address? Yes that's how the web works.
The server knows my window's resolution? Well I think thats very useful information for the application to have for layouting.
You know what other application is recording my keystrokes right now? HackerNews. "recording keystrokes" is also known as "typing in a text box"
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#223* I'm not in that city. * It's running a kind of Chrome on a kind of Linux, at a stretch. * Nobody can infer when I work and when I sleep. That includes me. * The recent, high-end display is the screen of a low-end tablet I bought in a supermarket five years ago. * But yes, browser fingerprinting is annoying. * Since you can detect light mode, would it kill you to honor it?
> I'm not in that city.
I'm using Apple's Private Relay VPN so it was hundreds of miles off. It's always interesting to see where websites or services think I'm located using their geolocation databases, but if I turn it off they can pinpoint me within a couple of miles. Thankfully almost nobody has ever blocked Apple's VPN, so I never have to turn it off.
> Since you can detect light mode, would it kill you to honor it?
Seriously, I'm in my mid-30s but some of these dark mode sites make me feel mid-80s. I can't see shit on this site.
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to use umatrix, preferred it to ublock origin advanced mode. However, isn't umatrix unsupported?
It hasn't received updates in a good long while, but seems to work fine, for me anyway. Has some rough edges, logging blocks when there's a bunch of redirects is a bit of a pain, making it hard to fix whitelisting in complicated things (like the dozen domains microsoft uses for auth) but apart from that...
(and ofc there's a bunch of forks adding bugfixes, some even relatively recent in activity, but unfortunately none have become the blessed official maintainer)
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's because I'm idealistic in addition to being old, but I think a lot of this functionality was in fact added for explicit purposes. A client sends the language header or the list of supported fonts not so that the server can "do whatever they want with this data." There is (or was) a real reason for it when we came up with these standards. The fact that website providers, or more specifically ad-networks, ha…
I don’t understand why that would be an implicit agreement, though? Why would I expect that the website would not try to figure out who I am? They are free to remember whatever they want about my request… but I am also free to modify the request however I want, if I choose to randomize the list of fonts or choose to not send it or whatever.
> Why would I expect that the website would not try to figure out who I am?
Because doing so is creepy.
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#226An instant loading page without animations and more contrast would have been more fun. The fact that it begins with my IP address reminds me of those dubious VPN ads. City is wrong, I may speak English but it's not my native language. As other people said, there are much better pages showing you your browser fingerprint.
And like most people discussing these things, you entirely miss the point. It doesn't matter whether you actually speak english natively or not, nobody cares about the actual values. Web sites don't actually care whether you have a robust font package in some way to discern whether you are a font hipster or something, they are just collecting signals. What matters is that your physical machine and web browser combo r…
> It doesn't matter whether you actually speak english natively or not
So don't you think presenting the info as it's a great uncovered secret and then getting it wrong will lead the layman to disbelieveing everything?
Of course, the other extreme is the EFF site that says "Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.33 bits of identifying information.".
There must be some middle ground to present this info.
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#227> We did not ask for your location. Your address arrived before you did. Bunk. You asked a geolocation api/service to map my ip address back to a location. You _did_ ask for my location, using my IP as a key. And my IP is pretty much required in order for communication on the internet to work (outside of using services to hide it, but then _they_ have your info instead).
Nah. The browser has a mechanism to request geolocation. This is the ask that was not performed. The user was not asked, which is the important piece. If I have a dictionary, I don't have to ask the meaning of a word I hear from someone I am speaking to, I can look it up in the dictionary. I may infer an incorrect meaning because the word has multiple meanings or is a colloquialism. If I need to clarify that inaccura…
> Nah. The browser has a mechanism to request geolocation. This is the ask that was not performed. The user was not asked, which is the important piece.
The geolocation API requires prompting the user for permission before it can be used: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Geolocation...
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#228Maybe it's just because I am old, or have worked on internet software for almost 30 years, but none of this seems surprising or even concerning? Someone sets up a server that accepts connections to it and then someone sends a connection request to it. There has been no agreement on anything, no expectations or rules established. No one forces the server to accept any connection request it gets, and no one forces some…
Maybe it's because I'm idealistic in addition to being old, but I think a lot of this functionality was in fact added for explicit purposes. A client sends the language header or the list of supported fonts not so that the server can "do whatever they want with this data." There is (or was) a real reason for it when we came up with these standards. The fact that website providers, or more specifically ad-networks, ha…
Sure, but I think some of the stuff it sends isn't necessary. A website doesn't need to know the list of fonts on my machine, for example.
Some of them are questionable: most websites do not need to know my time zone, but when a website can use that in a useful way related to its functionality, it would be annoying if the browser were to popup an allow/deny dialog, and even more annoying if I had to manually set it in the website's bespoke settings panel.
I'm not sure what the solution is here.
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#229Maybe it's just because I am old, or have worked on internet software for almost 30 years, but none of this seems surprising or even concerning? Someone sets up a server that accepts connections to it and then someone sends a connection request to it. There has been no agreement on anything, no expectations or rules established. No one forces the server to accept any connection request it gets, and no one forces some…
> Of course, I know in practice most people don't understand what their browsers are doing, and there aren't a ton of practical choices for people around what their browser sends, and the internet is no longer an optional thing for a lot of our lives. This is the root problem. Your browser is supposed to be your agent. It's the User Agent, after all! It should be working on the user's behalf, users should understand…
I don’t think it is as simple as saying browsers are working for the web developer and advertisers.
All the features that allow web sites and ad companies to track and target ads are features that are primarily there to give functionality that makes the web a better experience for users. JavaScript allows websites that are better experiences than not having it. I know some people disagree, but I think they are either intentionally ignoring useful things or have a purity view of the web that doesn’t match most people.
Re: A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's because I'm idealistic in addition to being old, but I think a lot of this functionality was in fact added for explicit purposes. A client sends the language header or the list of supported fonts not so that the server can "do whatever they want with this data." There is (or was) a real reason for it when we came up with these standards. The fact that website providers, or more specifically ad-networks, ha…
I don’t understand why that would be an implicit agreement, though? Why would I expect that the website would not try to figure out who I am? They are free to remember whatever they want about my request… but I am also free to modify the request however I want, if I choose to randomize the list of fonts or choose to not send it or whatever.
Website is a good dog. But its owners don’t have to be good as they can re-sell data about you to someone else.
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