alt Hacker NewsThe scope and amount of information that browsers hand over without the slightest shred of consent from the user or indication it’s happening is crazy.
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It's a UX trade off. For non-adversarial websites it's very convenient for users because things just work without having to go through loads of permissions pop ups for every website, but of course this then makes this info a juicy target if you're trying to fingerprint someone.
Is it though?
Google's business model has been ads from the beginning. Search, gmail, drive, office, chrome, everything they do is just to drive ad revenue further.
They don't care about the user. Never have, and never will.
And the outcome we are seeing is what happens when a defunct state isn't able to protect citizens from conglomerates. That's what the Kartellamt or the FTC is supposed to be for.
That's not a browser thing. Fingerprinting native apps is much easier.
And also without logging it. Even if I don’t want popups to give consent for every document.getEyeColor() call, it would be nice go back and see who’s doing which queries and/or have Firefox collect aggregate statistics. Naming and shaming the crooks won’t stop them but it might have an impact on curbing any bad behavior from big commercial retailers.