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Mozilla Says Chrome’s Latest Feature Enables Surveillance:
Chrome 94 has officially dropped. As is always the case with a new browser version, there’s plenty to be excited about. However, there are also some items to be skeptical about, including a feature Mozilla claims enables surveillance on you.
[...] Chrome 94 introduces a controversial idle detection API. Basically, websites can ask Chrome to report when a user with a web page open is idle on their device. It’s not just about your usage of Chrome or a particular website: If you’ve stepped away from your computer and aren’t using any applications, Chrome can tell the website you’re not actively using your computer.
As you might expect, developers love this new feature—anything that can provide them with more information regarding how users are interacting with their apps is a positive. It’s enabled by default in Chrome 94, but it might not be as bad as it sounds. Like using your webcam or microphone, a prompt will ask your permission before using your idle data on a particular website.
The API comes with its fair share of opponents, including rival browser-maker Mozilla. The folks behind Firefox say that it creates an “opportunity for surveillance capitalism.” Mozilla’s Web Standards Lead Tantek Çelik commented on GitHub, saying:
As it is currently specified, I consider the Idle Detection API too tempting of an opportunity for surveillance capitalism motivated websites to invade an aspect of the user’s physical privacy, keep longterm records of physical user behaviors, discerning daily rhythms (e.g. lunchtime), and using that for proactive psychological manipulation (e.g. hunger, emotion, choice)…
Thus I propose labeling this API harmful, and encourage further incubation, perhaps reconsidering simpler, less-invasive alternative approaches to solve the motivating use-cases.
Of course, Mozilla competes with Google Chrome, so it’s not surprising that a competitor might have strong words about something Google is doing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:34PM (1 child)
https://techdows.com/2021/09/disable-chrome-idle-detection.html [techdows.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @03:00AM
Running Chrome 93.xx on another laptop (it's sitting next to this one running Firefox).
Manually typed in--
chrome://settings/content/idleDetection
but the first time I didn't use the CAP "D"--turns out this is case sensitive...found that it was set to:
X Sites can ask to know when you are actively using your device.
So it appears that this isn't new with Chrome 94(?)
Clicked the "Don't allow sites..." box. Will see if it makes any noticeable difference.
(fyi--the laptop that runs Chrome is only used for one customer who insists I use Microsoft Teams to communicate with them.)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:36PM (3 children)
Javascript was optional, until it wasn't. This will be the same. The difference is that Javascript actually has a useful purpose in addition to the bad while this "feature" has no redeeming value.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 30 2021, @07:16PM
Yeah, tell that to the advertisers who want to make sure you're watching their ads.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:33PM
It's open source. Don't like it ? Fork it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 01 2021, @12:01AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:57PM (2 children)
Guess mozilla found this out while copy-pasting chrome source code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @07:33PM
Mozilla only ape chrome features. They're not innovative enough to copy source code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 02 2021, @06:48AM
Is this some sort of Google superiority post? This is exactly the point of open source, so if someone finding a fault in OSS code shouldn't this be more of a celebration?
Am I on the wrong site? Is hatred of "them" enough to toss out our ideals???
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:20PM
Surveillance Capitalist builds surveillance to capitalize on surveillance.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:22PM
This squarely falls into the category of "who the fuck even asks for this particular api?" No-one with good intentions needs this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:41PM (5 children)
I wish this modern idiocy of using "dropped" to mean "released" would go away. It's too easily confused with dropped traditionally meaning canceled, fired, etc. When I read online that a movie has "dropped" I initially think the movie was canceled, when the moronic millennial that wrote the piece meant it was released.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:49PM
"Chrome 94 has officially dropped."
In to the toilet.
This is why we need proper long term beta testing cycles back, so people don't get stuck with dumb useless experimental SHIT like this.
"Like using your webcam or microphone, a prompt will ask your permission". Ha, ha, ha. very funny. You know damn well every consumertard out there has been programmed to click "yes".
(Score: 4, Touché) by Farmer Tim on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:52PM
Came for the news, stayed for the soap opera.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:15PM
I was trying to figure out what might have been unintentionally 'dropped' from their sentence. For instance, "Chrome 94 has officially dropped [all pretense of not being spyware]"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 01 2021, @12:06AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @01:33AM
No, yeah.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @07:27PM (1 child)
I have a finger in several related pies; security, webops, direct usage, etc.
I don't think I've ever been "excited about" a browser release. Best case is nothing breaks. Worst case is shitty work. WTF is exciting about "oh they rejiggered some UI/UX and broke some of my plugins"???
Totally inane lines in the article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:24PM
It can not be good. Tech reporters should get it checked before they completly fuck up the sector.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by owl on Thursday September 30 2021, @07:54PM (2 children)
have the detect I'm idle, and shutdown all foreground/background activity in the browser while I'm idle.
Running top on Linux while watching the firefox processes is interesting. There is usually some small amount of running in the background going on, even in an otherwise totally idle browser. And occasionally the background runtime borders on 50% CPU utilization or more. When I'm not using it, I want the browser at 0% cpu usage 100% of the time.
I've actually created my own "stop it" script that uses killall to "kill -STOP" all the browser processes to make sure it is using 0% CPU for those times when I really do want it to "just stop running".
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:45PM (1 child)
I have a script like that too:
kill -9 $(pgrep --uid $(id --user) firefox)
Put that in your crontab -e under */1 * * * * and get back oodles of time!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 01 2021, @12:10AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 30 2021, @08:16PM (6 children)
How about none of my browsers are permitted to access my camera, my mic, or any other hardware? Further, geolocation is off, notifications are denied, cookies are rejected, and fingerprinting is squashed at the source. Not to mention my user agent is faked. I do everything possible to prevent the surveillance machine tracking me, and I'm not sure if it's enough.
Why would anyone even want a web browser to report any data back to the advertisers?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:58PM (4 children)
I bring this up because I'm curious if others have suggestions since it's pretting f'n clear that having an advertising company make our browser is less than ideal. One of my extra browsers is Opera, which is just a reskinning of Chrome... so it's not like it's immune to exploits Chrome isn't. I'd love to know if others are using something different.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 01 2021, @03:34AM
I use Chrome as a sort of sandbox for ALL the snoopy shit (Youtube, anything else Google, etc.) so it can all be its own circle-jerk together, and because in other browsers there's always something about YT that doesn't work right.
However, I'm starting to think even that is too much Chrome, and am considering moving all the snoopy shit to one of its bastard cousins, like Vivaldi or Ungoogled. I see Vivaldi has an Import All Your Shit setting, which at least would make it easy. (I haven't really looked much at any of these, being Not A Fan of Chrome in the first place. For all I know all of 'em do this.)
Actual everyday browsing gets done in SeaMonkey, which is rather more trainable to not shit my data all over the internet (and far less annoying in various ways, even tho performance is relatively crap).
Side complaint: current Chrome does not respect system titlebar settings on linux, even tho it now has a Rclick setting to do just that. It used to respect it, without any damn setting. How the hell do you break something by making it a setting??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 01 2021, @03:40AM
Since I'm over there staring at it,
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium [github.com]
...and I see it's in PCLOS's repository. Trying to make it too easy, they are...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 01 2021, @04:44AM (1 child)
I'll offer you a warning: Don't install Opera Beta, or it will break your Opera. And, Beta isn't impressive, because there's too much crap in it that nobody needs. Even worse is OperaGX - a browser made specially for gamers. I stuck OperaGX in a virtual machine, and it pretty much made that machine unusable. If Beta and GX are any indication of where they are going with their browser, you'll soon be trashing everything Opera.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday October 01 2021, @02:41PM
Thank you for the heads up!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 01 2021, @03:20AM
"Why would anyone even want a web browser to report any data back to the advertisers?"
...browser owners who are paid by the minute.
Actually, I expect this is data to be used to bilk, er, I mean get a better handle on how much to bill advertisers on a per minute basis. "Look, everyone leaves your ad page running for hours! It's worth a LOT MOAR MONEY!! Pay up."
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday October 01 2021, @02:41AM
Crap. It’s the marketers who love this feature. The developers have the same opinion as us but get told what to implement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @07:58PM
This "feature" should be left out of any standard for which browsers are held so that web pages function properly without it. Chrome is not the Internet nor it should be. When will we stand up to Apple, Google, Microsoft, et al and take back control of the Internet?
(Score: 1) by vali.magni on Saturday October 02 2021, @06:22AM
Unfortunately Vivaldi too has this now. Check
vivaldi://settings/content/idleDetection