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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday August 02 2016, @06:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-bro-is-getting-smarter dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday August 02 2016, @09:34PM

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 02 2016, @09:34PM (#383355)

    Which is why I consider blocking ads, and as much tracking as possible, to be a moral imperative. If enough people block ads this entire business model will collapse.

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