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It doesn’t. There are just ways to tell because private mode restricts certain APIs, so you can check against limits.
by scrollaway 4y ago
It doesn’t. There are just ways to tell because private mode restricts certain APIs, so you can check against limits.
- ryandrake 4y agoInstead of restricting access to APIs, "private modes" should just return junk data. This should be on the browser to fix. I would love it if my browser would return random numbers for things that web sites have no business querying, like my screen size or the number of cores in my cpu.
- Gigachad 4y agoThe rabbit hole goes down a long way. You end up with things like timing api calls and if it’s too fast you know it must be junk from the private mode fake api.
- unsafecast 4y agoYou could also just do the actual query then return garbage.
- Gigachad 4y agoSure, but browsers are complex enough that it becomes an endless cat and mouse game where adversaries are able to find an endless list of things to differentiate private browsing with. The browser makers have been tightening things up but the people making these scripts have a long list of tricks in their backlog so they just roll the next one out immediately.
- MiddleEndian 4y agoBanks should do the same. ATM wants to know how much money I have? $17!
- thatguy0900 4y agoI have no idea what you're trying to say here. T-mobile wanting to know how many cores my cpu has is equivalent to my bank telling me how much money I have?
- MiddleEndian 4y agoNo, I sincerely think that I should have a setting to to tell my bank to lie to ATMs, especially useful for those that print out receipts automatically.
- hilbert42 4y agoOK, so the next step is to spoof those APIs. That's to say the browser should report itself as something 'respectable' and not restrict said APIs but to send back garbage. This is getting beyond a joke. Governments should demand common carriers be just that—license to operate dictates no interference with the data-stream and no monitoring of users' habits. Why the hell is it so difficult for governments to legislate these requirements?
- MiddleEndian 4y ago>license to operate dictates no interference with the data-stream and no monitoring of users' habits. I agree, but in this case, it's T-Mobile's website, rather than their service.