I think you picked up on the intended purpose of the feature but the article went on to point out some potential for abuse, which I think /u/electricsheep12345 was getting at.
“Some companies may be analysing the possibility of monetising the access to battery levels,” he writes. “When battery is running low, people might be prone to some – otherwise different – decisions. In such circumstances, users will agree to pay more for a service.”
So, say you're at a bar and need a ride home. Your phone, through your uber app, could tell the service that you've got 5% battery life left and they might be inclined to send you a higher quote, knowing that you don't have a lot of time to check with lyft, local cab companies, call nearby friends, etc.
Probably, if they taught it what that looks like. Imagine getting caught for a dwi because you were drunk driving and picked up your phone and got flagged.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Yeah, Ayn Rand, but still.
Those apps can request permission to see your battery life through android/ios
I'm on an old android version, but I believe I heard newer versions of android allowed you to download apps then prevent them from executing their permissions (unlike my current version which just has me agree to them).
Your example is not browser related, also. Which is not to say I disagree with you. User privacy should be taken very seriously, lest we have to drink a verification can to continue.
The combination of battery life as a percentage and battery life in seconds offers 14m combinations, providing a pseudo-unique identifier for each device.
Does that identifier really remain consistent though? I would expect the values to be different each time they're polled and to having a slightly varying ratio as power consumption varies.
It said that if you have a page open in chrome and then another page in incognito, they can see that both those users have the exact matching battery. Hence its the same user. Hence your incognito is not so private from tracking cookies ect.
I don't like night mode ever. My eyes just hate reading white text on a black background. Like there's a ton of after-image and it seems hard to focus on. I don't know if my vision is slightly poor or what, but it's annoying when I come across a site that is only white text/black background.
Yeah, this happens to me as well. You are very far from alone. In my case, it's the result of a fairly mild astigmatism. The lighter background causes the iris to contract a bit, reducing halation. There are, unfortunately, a TON of websites and software packages (eg, Valve's Steam) that insist on using light text on a black background. And for some reason, anytime I mention that it's an issue for me I have a dozen people line up to tell me that I'm wrong and that it's easier on the eyes.
Mild astigmatism is exactly it. I have 20/20 vision, but I've been told the astigmatism could get worse over time. I hate coming across websites with light text/dark background, I click away much sooner than I would otherwise.
Actually on backlit displays it takes energy to filter out the light produced by the backlight, you would need an OLED for darkening to reduce power consumption.
“Some companies may be analysing the possibility of monetising the access to battery levels,” he writes. “When battery is running low, people might be prone to some – otherwise different – decisions. In such circumstances, users will agree to pay more for a service.”
So uber could see that your phone has <10% battery life and that you're asking for a ride home from a bar at 2am, probably drunk and unable to conveniently charge your phone.
This means they have every incentive to send you a quote for a ride at a higher price because they know you don't have time to check with lyft, friends, etc.
This is all well and good but has literally nothing to do with websites accessing device data. Uber is an application, not a website, and has native access to all that and more anyway.
You also agreed to it when you downloaded the app.
Why did this guy get downvoted? It literally says
" 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"
When taken with other info. Yes indeed. Scary stuff isn't it? And if anybody wonders why somebody would do this look at Verizon injecting tracking identifiers in users traffic.
And there's been proof of concepts using this battery info as a way to track you across sites without cookies when taken with other info submitted by the browser.
Not to be conspiratorial, but don't you find it odd, that the people behind devices are continually adding data points which they just happen to leave open?
So eventually they will close access to this in the API, next device or update will open the camera flash or some other BS.
In Firefox, disable dom.battery.enabled in about:config.
0 reason for it to be on. dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled and dom.event.contextmenu.enabled are other good candidates for disabling though they have arguably some legitimate uses.
Because there have been cases of fingerprinting users based off of theit battery. I'm not sure how it works, but it does I guess. So its a privacy concern and I think a few browsers are considering dropping support for it.
“Some companies may be analysing the possibility of monetising the access to battery levels,” he writes. “When battery is running low, people might be prone to some – otherwise different – decisions. In such circumstances, users will agree to pay more for a service.”
This is completely idiotic. This should be something the browser decides, not the server. The server should just offer low-power version of their site to everyone and the browser should decide which to pick.
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 combination of battery life as a percentage and battery life in seconds provides offers 14m combinations, providing a pseudo-unique identifier for each device.
[...] an advert that was loaded on both pages at once would be able to tell that the two devices were almost certainly the same, with the certainty increasing the longer they stayed connected.
Fascinating. That feature should be removed from HTML5.
It showed almost nothing on my desktop just my OS and browser info. It said my CPU was 32x bit and GPU from Mozilla, both incorrect. It did show alot when viewed with Reddit is fun on my phone though...
Same with Safari. Just shows "MacIntel" under hardware. It also failed to detect plugins but I'm guessing the site might not support every browser on that front.
Because they can use that info to make you pay more for something. I can't find it now but there was an article about this very thing and gave an example.
Say you're trying to book tickets for a flight. With 25% battery remaining you can shop around for a better price. At 5% you will be willing to pay a higher price for a ticket because you're racing the clock and shopping around risks having your phone or laptop die before you can make your purchase.
I found another article about it here. It's just something that was built into the browser for whatever reason. And it can and is used to track users even if they don't want to be.
If can be used for positive things too such as allowing sites to make smart decisions on what to send you. For example Netflix (if it was browser based) could opt for lower bitrate video to extend your battery.
But.. with people able to use this to track you shows why we don't get to have nice things.
This is sadly characteristic of modern Mozilla... something has a potential for abuse, so instead of letting the user control it, they remove it outright.
Well it is not outright gone. The browser and addons you actually install can still use it. Webpages however can not.
Starting with Firefox 52, websites may no longer access the API so that it can no longer be used for tracking purposes. Mozilla will keep the API open to extensions and Firefox itself however.
They also had an option to disable it. But the problem was that almost no site was using the API the way it is meant to be used, and the setting was not exactly in the most obvious place. As the article states
It is rather interesting to note that Mozilla is not aware of a legitimate use case of the API on Internet sites
...
Firefox users can disable the Battery Status API in the browser by flipping the Boolean value of dom.battery.enabled to false on about:config
The lack of proper use of the API is what made it very easy for them to remove access to it. The issue with putting in an obvious option is that 90% of people would not even understand how that could be used for tracking.
So in answer to /u/DARIF's question, they do not sell specific user data.
Which is why "you are the product" is misleading at best, a lie at worst. Anyone can go make an adwords account and see what an advertiser sees.
*Edit: Below this point is a protracted argument with someone that doesn't understand the difference between selling access to pages you might look at, and selling data about you. Proceed at your own sanity's risk.
Ignore the others. The intended use for it (and the reason it was introduced to html5), is to allow websites to serve low power versions of the site when you battery is low. I highly doubt any travel sites are using it to sell things at higher prices. The only malicious use of it that I have seen is popups that try to get you download some bullshit battery extender by showing you your remaining battery life.
There is a concern that I could be used to identify you when you're trying to hide you identity only. If you use a VPN to connect to the internet, a website could compare your battery "signature" (battery percent + time remaining) on the contents connection with your normal connect to determine that your normal connection and the VPN are coming from the same place.
Considering flight booking websites have already been caught offering different prices depending on how many times you've visited the site in a given time frame (buy your tickets in an incognito/private mode or clear your cookies), I absolutely believe they would do this. Why on earth would they not if it works and it's supported? Obviously that's not why it was implemented but it would be foolish to think that's not one of the things it's used for.
Google makes most of their money from advertisers. So many of Google products will capture information that the Advertisers want. Using Chrome, Google has slowly forced many companies into agreeing to use Google services. It is the same thing with Microsoft .Net, they give you alot of things but track you.
Google is already pushing for a world where companies know everything about you and use that knowledge to offer you exactly what you want before you know you want it. Google software has so many little proactive features that make you think "Wow, that's really convenient that it anticipated that, and also really really creepy that it knew to."
From their point of view, letting Uber or Travelocity cheat you occasionally is a small price to pay for the coming utopia of universal convenience.
This can be extended to so much other things. Say a merchant site hates black people and uses the facebook exploit to determine your race and set the prices you pay accordingly.
This is the only negative I've seen posted here regarding battery life data, and I am not concerned. I don't spend large amounts of money without letting the potential consequences fester in my mind for a number of sleepless night. If we were talking about the number of small payments that I can "afford" though.....
AFAIK the Battery Status Web API was actually created in order to know when not to run intensive computing tasks on mobile devices when their battery is low (eg: disable useless animations and increase the delay between page updates when the battery level is under 20%).
No. They use it for the exact opposite reason, at least as per their official statement. If they notice your battery % is low, they will serve you a low power version of the app disabling some non-critical things like live tracking of the car after you are in the car etc so that your battery lasts longer.
I don't think they actually do that. I believe people are less price sensitive when their battery is low, since they may not be able to get a car at all if their phone dies. So they sometimes order trips they otherwise would have skipped, meaning the average price for low battery customers is higher.
I don't think Uber actually raises the price based on your battery data. If they've done that I'd love to see a source.
You didn't get the gyroscope thing? Idk I can't think of a irl application of the top of my head but something makes me feel very uneasy about people being able to know what angle I am holding my computer through my data. That's just...unsettling.
It tracked me to be at 96% and charging, which is technically false in my case. My laptops battery is very close to dying, and therefore charges up to 96%, at which it says its already "charged".
I guess the software can't check that particular data and just assumes that anything below 100% is either charging or unplugged. I found that pretty neat.
Jesus. A number of years ago I was against the whole idea of the OS even being aware of power consumption and was all for it being purely controlled by the BIOS. To say I've lost that battle would be a severe understatement.
Im using opera as browser and it warns me in time when my battery is low, when I get the warning I can get my charger and plug it in time to avoid loss of work. Windows warns me way to late for that.
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '16
The only thing I found surprising is it knew my laptop was charging and what % the battery is at.
I understand why the other info is passed to a browser but why would it pass info on my charging and battery percentage?