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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, @08:55PM
Instead of mobile.site.org or m.site.org they could do lowpower.site.org.
Great idea, maybe also add chargedHalfway.site.org and charged75Percent.site.org and phoneinlandscape.site.org and phoneinportrait.site.org and wastelotsofcycles.site.org and ... you get the point.
They can't even make a website that works for all browsers yet, now you want to throw another permutation on top of it as well? Are you a masochist (if you are, that's cool by me as long as it is targetted towards web^Wfull-stack 'developers')
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 02 2016, @11:07PM
You must not have read my entire post. I said that if you had to do it, then there was probably a better approach (that protects privacy). But even then it is a waste of time when you could be doing something that matters more like ADA compliance or non-javascript feature parity.
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