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Battery Status Being Used to Track Your Mobile Browsing

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

Dogeball writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday August 03 2016, @01:16AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Wednesday August 03 2016, @01:16AM (#383441)

    times like this make me think we're a failed experiment, down here.

    yes they may but the experiment is far from over. we still have a very good chance of making this world a nice place to be.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @02:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @02:04PM (#383591)

    *shake* *shake* *shake* "outlook not so good"

  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday August 06 2016, @01:05AM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 06 2016, @01:05AM (#384666) Journal

    I find this world to be an absolutely awesome place to be ...as long as I avoid enough humans :3

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))