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This standard is being used by ads to track your mobile browsing habits across sites, connections and VPNs.
From the article:
Intended to allow site owners to serve low-power versions of sites and web apps to users with little battery capacity left, soon after it was introduced, privacy researchers pointed out that it could also be used to spy on users. The combination of battery life as a percentage and battery life in seconds provides offers 14m combinations, providing a pseudo-unique identifier for each device.
The standard suggests that false data can be provided by the client to hide the true battery status for testing purposes. It seems to me that there should be a privacy setting to randomize battery status, which privacy mode in browsers should enable by default.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @06:46PM
Chrome on Android only supports the charging state and battery level, not much data to go on.
Safari and IE don't support this API at all.
Desktops have no battery to report, or a UPS which is fully charged almost always.
Firefox at least lets you turn this "feature" off.
So this is mostly a problem for people using Chrome on laptops while not fully charged on AC power. Not an insignificant group, but not the end of the world. And it loses track of you whenever you are fully charged.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday August 02 2016, @09:10PM
You probably haven't been yet informed: more than 50% of the time, the web is consumed on mobile devices.
You can now proceed to think about TFA from this new angle.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @10:31PM
Why the fuck would somebody want this exposed to scripting?