4 ms·
There is some portion of the population that has an aversion to providing additional metadata about their browser, as it will be incorporated into your "browser
by Rychard 4y ago
There is some portion of the population that has an aversion to providing additional metadata about their browser, as it will be incorporated into your "browser fingerprint", increasing the likelihood that your browser can be (effectively) uniquely identified[0].
If there were some way to assure that this data wouldn't be used against me in some way, I would happily embrace simple solutions such as this. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of hackers/companies/governments that will gobble this data up and attempt to extract as much money from it as possible, without even the slightest consideration as to the impact it will have on end-users.
[0]: https://www.amiunique.org/ https://www.amiunique.org/
- colejohnson66 4y agoThe alternative to providing APIs to detect features is to keep using the mess we're currently using. Previously, I would see you're using Chrome version X and know what features are available. All the APIs do is shift from using hacked together string.contains(...)/string.indexOf(...) calls (with bad lookup tables) to a proper format where I can just ask isXAvailable(). Basically, the same information is there, just in a more accessible way. And if you disable a feature in your browser's settings, isXAvailable() will now return false while UA checking says you still have it.
- Aissen 4y agoI understand the fingerprinting angle. It could be mitigated by ensuring a given UA will have all versions across OSes be the same set of feature, and only evolve these feature bits at the same time as version. Developer mode could have more granularity, at the cost of uniqueness.