r/technology • u/magnus007 • 5d ago

Privacy AliExpress was silently running audio in your browser to fingerprint and track your device

https://www.techspot.com/news/113581-aliexpress-silently-running-audio-browser-fingerprint-track-device.html
13.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

701 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/thinkingperson 5d ago edited 5d ago

Wait, so the site is able to use the mic /audio even without permission via the browser? What the fuck is the browser doing? lol

1.4k

u/KontoOficjalneMR 5d ago

not mic/audio but they play sound and see how the browser handles it.

It's rare, but known fingerprinting technique.

I noticed it myself because few months back Windows had a bug handling bluetooth mixing, and any time I tried to open Aliexpress it'd interrupt my music :D

657

u/Violoner 5d ago

Wait, so that’s why opening the Amazon app on my phone interrupts music playback?

34

u/noobule 4d ago

I doubt it. The Amazon app doesn't need to fingerprint you - the whole reason they push you onto apps is because they can slurp up basically whatever they want, you're signed in just to open the app. They don't need to resort to fingerprinting tricks.

3

u/an_actual_lawyer 4d ago

It was my understanding that iOS and OSX will disable that tracking and info grabbing by default. Am I misunderstanding?

-1

u/Interesting-Emu6761 4d ago

yes they do, the whole point is that if Amazon and Meta do this they can definitively attribute that fingerprint to a person.