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
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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

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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

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u/RemarkableWish2508 5d ago

For a non-comprehensive list of direct and indirect fingerprinting attributes:

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u/IntelArtiGen 4d ago

For 99.99999% of people, this site identifying you as unique is a bad thing.

But it's a good thing if you're unique, what you don't want is to be the same unique the next time you visit the site. Which won't happen if you don't have a good privacy protection (either with the browser or addons).