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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 TheGratefulNet on Tuesday August 02 2016, @11:41PM

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Tuesday August 02 2016, @11:41PM (#383404)

    marketing guys' heads will asplode if you tell them they can't have their 'carousels' and moving graphics. and those mouse-overs - the worst thing about 'active' pages. I move my mouse to get away from something and I bump into yet another popover. whoever thought that was good should be shot. and I'm almost serious, too. shoot the stupid morans who do first, before thinking.

    I had an argument with a marketing puke about the 'need' for a landing page with a moving carousel and he looked at me like I wanted to shoot his dog, when I suggested I don't want things moving on my page when I first land there, or any time after that. he drank the koolaid and he would hear nothing of what i suggested. his fellow pukes would not accept him if he didn't copy that annoying style like they all did.

    amazon has gotton worse, too; very few areas are 'safe' for a mouse anymore. and once something pops up, to see the thing I wanted, I spend more time getting rid of that popover. dammit.

    "how can I fool my fellow man" is NOT something to be proud of, you stupid yellow-tie-wearing asshats.

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