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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

#111

Post by mmis1000 »

darren_ wrote: post #54
godelski wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The example on web.dev is a chat app that would automatically set an active/away status: seems useful! I have an alternative way to do this. Check if a user hasn't interacted with your text box in x period of time. If they haven't, set them to away. I'm sure people can come up with other methods too. It just seems like there's a thousand ways to skin this cat that don't have the same potential for privacy issues.

But this isn't adequate for the IM use case at all? I spend the bulk of my time not focused on my chat app tab(s) but I definitely want to be reported as 'available' by those chat apps, because I am if someone messages me.

If I am using a chat app, I definitely have no interest to tell you anything outside of the chat window. Why on the earth should I tell everyone that I am in front of the computer or not? Can't they just tell if I use the chat app recently or not? (It's public info anyway, if i am chatting in group, others will see the message.) Such function is definitely a security risk and I don't think I need it.

Even only with public group messages, you can figure out some others sleep schedule or when is he/she mostly active if you have enough data. This api will only make things worse because it trace you 'actively' now.

Besides that, you are able to send message when other is not here is the biggest point of a text chat app. If you must chat instantly, why not just call with phone?

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#112

Post by raxxorrax »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #72
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…

Yeah, explicit confirmation is nice. However this is assuming Chrome won't have a whitelist of favoured domains that can bypass permission prompts like it has for other features (audio auto-play, and I believe also some VR-functionality, probably other things on top since I last checked). I gave the linked pages a quick look but it looks like the feature is still being worked on, and...I'm too tired to look through d…

Or "productivity software" that queries browsers and use time. Sure, the employee could click 'no'...

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#113

Post by somehnacct3757 »

AgentME wrote: post #104
somehnacct3757 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy problem isn't that Chrome is offering this permission to websites, it's that they built it into the browser at all. Now their browser, regardless of whether you're using any websites with this permission granted or not, has code that tracks if you're idle or not. There's no bar of entry whatsoever for this. Chrome will automatically update itself to Chrome 94 and voila - it tracks your idle status. Worse…

If the feature only tracks idleness when the user has been appropriately asked, then why care? It sounds like you're just worried instead by a potential future version that works with a completely different permission model and use-case. I don't think that's any more useful to worry about than "what if Google decides to just send someone a virus with their auto updates?" (well ok, maybe that's kind of interesting to…

I think you missed my main point which is that for a browser to offer a permission-gated flow to website developers, the browser executable itself needs to have the idle detection system in place. There's no permission to turn _that_ off in the browser itself. It can track your lock screen, and activity outside the browser without prompting you. It's installed automatically by the auto update mechanism.

You could argue that Chrome was already doing this and sending that data back to Google over telemetry. (I don't know if they were.) That's where my second point comes in. Before, they had no justification for this. If they do it, it would look like creepy tracking. Now if you call attention to it they can say oh that's just there to power idleness API, nothing to worry about.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#114

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #107
handoflixue wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for the other commenter, but I'm "available" when I sit at my computer playing Civilization for 6 hours, despite the fact that I won't touch my IM application that entire time. If you're trying to set "Away" based on how often I interact with the application, you're getting it wrong for 5 hours and 40 minutes of that period.

In this case the Chrome setting would also mark you as away. I'm not sure what your argument is.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#115

Post by takeda »

atatatat wrote: post #65
takeda wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You talk like that because you're a front web developer and that's your bread and butter. There are tons of other areas (even in computer science) where you are out of your bubble and you know nothing about.

Similarly, there are people who don't work on websites, writing javascript, in fact they think they think those people are dumb monkeys who can't even make their stuff work on all browsers.

They don't care about latest features, in fact they prefer browser being a dumb tool to view websites not a replacement for an OS.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#117

Post by handoflixue »

godelski wrote: post #107
handoflixue wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for the other commenter, but I'm "available" when I sit at my computer playing Civilization for 6 hours, despite the fact that I won't touch my IM application that entire time. If you're trying to set "Away" based on how often I interact with the application, you're getting it wrong for 5 hours and 40 minutes of that period.

In this case the Chrome setting would also mark you as away. I'm not sure what your argument is.

"It’s not just about your usage of Chrome or a particular website: If you’ve stepped away from your computer and aren’t using any applications, Chrome can tell the website you’re not actively using your computer."

That suggests to me that this feature is more than just "did you touch that particular tab", and I'm not really sure how you're reading it differently?

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#118

Post by code_duck »

syrrim wrote: post #91
code_duck wrote: post #48

Couldn't this information already be discerned fairly easily by user interaction such as mouse movements, requests or scrolling?

It detects whether the user is using the computer, not just the tab. If they were using another program for a prolonged period it would still report them as active.

Thanks, I see. That does seem totally unnecessary and potentially harmful.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#119

Post by akagusu »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #95
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 privacy problem isn't that Chrome is offering this permission to websites, it's that they built it into the browser at all. Now their browser, regardless of whether you're using any websites with this permission granted or not, has code that tracks if you're idle or not. There's no bar of entry whatsoever for this. Chrome will automatically update itself to Chrome 94 and voila - it tracks your idle status. Worse…

Nefarious intent? This is Google. People should avoid Google like the plague.

Re: Mozilla says Chrome’s latest feature enables surveillance

#120

Post by oblib »

halflings wrote: post #61
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 reaso…

Zoho is a fine app, but it's described as such "Zoho CRM is an online Sales CRM software that manages your sales,.."

That's not what ezInvoice does. There is a lot of crossover in the features we offer, but they're not really the same.

As to keeping up, the ezInvoice app is a Cloud app, and it's also a "Single Page", Offline-First, and Local-First app, so you're either missing that or ignoring it.

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

Goggle is in the business of collecting as much data on users as they can, and that includes the users of the products advertised on their platform and those companies that place them. They offer services specifically for that purpose and as far as I know Google sells data to other corporations.

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/financial-services/datash...

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