Comment by fxtentacle
3 years ago
It's because the developer of the browser needs fingerprinting for their ads.
I don't think Chrome accidentally exposed data that Google wanted.
3 years ago
It's because the developer of the browser needs fingerprinting for their ads.
I don't think Chrome accidentally exposed data that Google wanted.
Please don't spread obviously untrue conspiracy theories.
The main reason is that it's really hard to avoid fingerprinting (while providing rich features like WebGL and WebRTC anyway).
A secondary reason is that web browsers started off from a position of leaking fingerprint data all over the place so there's not much incentive to care about it for new features.
You might be interested in this effort to reduce fingerprinting: https://developer.chrome.com/en/docs/privacy-sandbox/privacy...
(The real conspiracy is that Google added logins to Chrome specifically so that they don't have to rely on fingerprinting. They have a huge incentive to stop fingerprinting because it leaves them as the only entity that can track users.)
I thought the developer of the browser is the only ad provider that _doesn't_ need it (since they have other, better ways to get that intel which their competitors do not).
they (google) did try.
that's the profile icon you see on your google-chrome UI.
but only fools use that feature.
what makes someone who uses that feature a "fool"? Some users don't particularly mind being tracked.
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The fly in the ointment with this theory is why Apple (or even Mozilla) would expose the same kind of information. Apple has only recently started experimenting with ads, and their ads are limited to the apps that they control.
The more benign explanation would be to allow developers to work around device-specific or browser-specific bugs.
(I'm aware Apple changes the GPU Model to "Apple GPU", however they do expose a ton of other properties that make it possible to fingerprint a device.)
Apple devices are in fact fairly difficult to fingerprint. In my experiments [1] all instances of the same hardware model (on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS) give the same fingerprint, so the best a tracker can get is "uses iPhone 14". Better than nothing, but not terribly unique.
[1] fingrprintr.pages.dev
Firefox do have a mechanism to limit the amount of data being leaked for fingerprinting, but it’s disabled by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...
Wow I just realised I’ve had this enabled for… since I first remember the feature announced, and the internet hasn’t broken.
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Continuing the push the browser to be a general app platform is the only way it can survive against native experience, which is already eating into the enthusiasm for the web. It seems like the trend for consumer companies is to maybe launch first on the web for velocity but eventually migrate to native experiences.
I wonder to what degree we can enable hardware performance without leaking user data.
Isn't Mozilla's main source of income from Google?