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Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

arstechnica.com

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Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#71

Post by binyu »

blfr wrote: post #6

Wait, wait, wait: browsers allow websites to store junk on my drive? They take up gigabytes of memory and still write to disk on top of this? Without even asking whether the site can use local storage? Years and years back when laptops still had HDDs, I had a script to put the Firefox profile &c on a ramdisk and sync it on reboots so that it didn't spin up the drive constantly. I guess I should have kept doing it. It…

> Wait, wait, wait: browsers allow websites to store junk on my drive?

Technically even a cookie is junk on your drive

> Without even asking whether the site can use local storage?

Would it be practical to ask permission for every site you visit? It would be better to periodically check the size of your home folder (where the browser profiles normally reside)

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#72

Post by hollerith »

VMG wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that we have AI, can we go back to real apps and native tech stacks? And revert the browser to a text-display interface?

Unfortunately, real apps and native tech stacks can not only write data to your SSD, they can usually write data to the user directory however they want and they can read it as well! Browsers are at least somewhat sandboxed

This is a Linux-centric take. It does not apply for example to iPadOS or to AluminiumOS (coming soon to a Googlebook near you). It applies less and less over time to MacOS.

Yes, if one is committed to the standard Linux desktop, then one must hope that any proprietary apps one might need will continue to be available through the browser, but I'm ready to let the standard Linux desktop go (not right now, but eventually).

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#74

Post by veunes »

blfr wrote: post #6

Wait, wait, wait: browsers allow websites to store junk on my drive? They take up gigabytes of memory and still write to disk on top of this? Without even asking whether the site can use local storage? Years and years back when laptops still had HDDs, I had a script to put the Firefox profile &c on a ramdisk and sync it on reboots so that it didn't spin up the drive constantly. I guess I should have kept doing it. It…

The funny part is that "put your browser profile on a ramdisk" used to sound like an obsessive performance tweak, and now it starts to look like a privacy mitigation

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#75

Post by veunes »

noirscape wrote: post #45
blfr wrote: post #6

Wait, wait, wait: browsers allow websites to store junk on my drive? They take up gigabytes of memory and still write to disk on top of this? Without even asking whether the site can use local storage? Years and years back when laptops still had HDDs, I had a script to put the Firefox profile &c on a ramdisk and sync it on reboots so that it didn't spin up the drive constantly. I guess I should have kept doing it. It…

Browsers have an absolute insane level of relatively unchecked permissions to do whatever they want on a client. There's a lot of effort by browser developers to scope creep the browser into essentially being an OS-agnostic tech stack (one where, conveniently, code can be shipped across the network "as necessary", removing a lot of user agency for the software being ran); Chrome being the biggest driver of this, whil…

The uncomfortable part is that each step is usually justified by a real use case

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#76

Post by data-ottawa »

Gormo wrote: post #52
blfr wrote: post #6

Wait, wait, wait: browsers allow websites to store junk on my drive? They take up gigabytes of memory and still write to disk on top of this? Without even asking whether the site can use local storage? Years and years back when laptops still had HDDs, I had a script to put the Firefox profile &c on a ramdisk and sync it on reboots so that it didn't spin up the drive constantly. I guess I should have kept doing it. It…

My shortcut for launching "clean" Chromium session is `chromium --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d)` -- each launch creates a new transient profile directory under /tmp, which is itself a RAM disk. Persistent settings are achieved by setting system-wide defaults in /etc/chromium, including using system-wide managed policy JSON.

Does this maintain your browser extensions (and their settings)?

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#78

Post by rayiner »

VMG wrote: post #64
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that we have AI, can we go back to real apps and native tech stacks? And revert the browser to a text-display interface?

Unfortunately, real apps and native tech stacks can not only write data to your SSD, they can usually write data to the user directory however they want and they can read it as well! Browsers are at least somewhat sandboxed

But you need relatively few native apps with those capabilities, in contrast to visiting many different websites for content consumption.

Re: Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity

#79

Post by Gormo »

data-ottawa wrote: post #76
Gormo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My shortcut for launching "clean" Chromium session is `chromium --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d)` -- each launch creates a new transient profile directory under /tmp, which is itself a RAM disk. Persistent settings are achieved by setting system-wide defaults in /etc/chromium, including using system-wide managed policy JSON.

Does this maintain your browser extensions (and their settings)?

Yes, extensions can be installed into the system-wide config via entries in the manged policy JSON. Settings configured in a specific browser session naturally won't persist, though, but defaults set in an initial preferences config will be present.
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