Live data from Hacker News

AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

blog.laserphile.com

291–300 of 348 posts

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#292
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I have been getting a request from chrome for access to local network devices. I can’t figure out which site I’m visiting is doing this, because the request doesn’t specify which tab. I would LOVE a little icon for something like that.

Chrome says "this site", no? Isn't it the tab you have in focus? I wonder what kind of person says 'Yes' to this prompt. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

3D mice and other hardware may run a local server for web applications to use them as input methods. The dialog can also show up if you are using network security software which proxies requests via private IP address range. Plenty of other non-nefarious reasons too...

Safari and Firefox allow this by default without a prompt or visible indicator (but maybe that has changed now that Chrome added its dialog).

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, this is my first post to HN and in the submission it looked like the description text i added would be part of the post header.

HN's fault entirely. The post form's actioning "text" as a comment is remiss.

Ah, sorry I wasn’t aware of that either

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should make that obvious in some way like using “TLDR”. I assume many people, like me, would attempt to parse your comment as a comment on the article, after all it’s in the comment section, and read that way it’s very confusing lol.

Sorry, this is my first post to HN and in the submission it looked like the description text i added would be part of the post header.

Sorry, I didn’t realise you were the author

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#295
post #59

With my previous hearing aid I noticed that visiting a wide variety of web sites would cause a change in the amplification of environmental noise. I always assumed it was doing something with Bluetooth, and probably not for a good reason. This is with an iPhone 13 and one Kirkland/phonak hearing aid. I haven’t noticed this recently, but I also now have two newer Phonak hearing aids and a few iOS updates have happened…

I have the same on Android with my phonaks - not websites though, but both taking a photo and paying using Samsung pay appear to open an audio stream briefly, just long enough to jump into Bluetooth mode. It takes ~6 seconds to go back afterwards.

Quite frustrating as I'm often needing to hear the cashier at that point!

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the intended outcome would be that sites would be pressured into not being malignant actors with regards to user privacy, rather than everyone just ignoring the security notice.

i understand the intention, and i offered my opinion on what the actual outcome would be. ~every piece of data can be used for fingerprinting. settings and preferences, browser, os, etc. fingerprinting is not its own category of data, it's the correlation of regular data. the "pressure" ends up being: stop receiving any data at all (which would obviously break ~everything), or put up a warning (leading to fatigue). c…

I touched on this in my article, once the data has been collected and sent to their servers you have no idea what they do with the information. At least with GDPR it is supposed to be regulated but obviously that is not the case everywhere and websites can still lie.

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thaaaaaaat explains why an open Aliexpress tab always bumps my thermals ever so slightly.

What?

CPU gets a little hotter, fan runs a little faster. Close the tab, it calms back down.

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#298
post #172
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot ever imagine installing something like AliExpress as an app.

But isn’t the promise of the app store that the apps are checked for malicious code and more control of the permissions compared to a browser website?

That's the promise, yeah.

Re: AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint

#299
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I have been getting a request from chrome for access to local network devices. I can’t figure out which site I’m visiting is doing this, because the request doesn’t specify which tab. I would LOVE a little icon for something like that.

Chrome says "this site", no? Isn't it the tab you have in focus? I wonder what kind of person says 'Yes' to this prompt. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

No, it’s a macOS level prompt.
Post reply on HN