They have been doing this for months.
No sound playing but the audio would change like the microphone was being activated. I checked permissions to make sure there was no mic access and figured that they were fingerprinting.
AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
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Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#12They have been doing this for months. No sound playing but the audio would change like the microphone was being activated. I checked permissions to make sure there was no mic access and figured that they were fingerprinting.
I had noticed it before but I was browsing AE a lot today and i got fed up with it. What browser and OS are you using?
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#13Just curious, why silent sound would allow fingerprinting? What are they sampling if it can't be heard?
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#14I noticed in the last few weeks that if I’d recently opened the AliExpress iOS app (ie. it was backgrounded) my car audio would freak out thinking I was giving it an audio command. Killing the AliExpress app immediately fixed the problem. After seeing it happen more than once I assumed it was something dodgey and uninstalled the app.
It's known that some Chinese mobile apps employ this trick to keep the app alive in the background, the rumor is that this way the 'active user' KPI can be better met.
edit: quantity qualifier
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#15OP please submit the filter to an upstream uBlock filter list.
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#16JS enabled by default seems every day less secure.
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#17Just curious, why silent sound would allow fingerprinting? What are they sampling if it can't be heard?
The script generates a known waveform, it is passed through the browser's audio implementation and then the script analyses the result after. Based on your devices settings and hardware the output will be different, e.g. a PC with analog output might have 44KHz audio output bandwidth, but a bluetooth headset might have a lower, different audio bandwidth. That is a datapoint that can be used in device fingerprinting alongside screen and viewport dimensions,
device pixel ratio, browser plugins, etc.
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#18JS enabled by default seems every day less secure.
So many website break completely with JS disabled and you end up having to enable it half the time anyway.
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#19OP please submit the filter to an upstream uBlock filter list.
Will do!
edit - How do i do this? through github issues? https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues
Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
#20I've seen this on many many other sites as well, most notably Twitter, and lots of common modern captcha pages too. Very annoying!