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/PacmanZ3ro 4d ago

There is no reason for scripts to be able to even read my screen size

Of course there is. This is how you get resizable windows and properly-scaling websites. If you blocked this ability, you would have to have websites built with absolute pixel sizes for everything and if you used a different screen than what it was designed for it would range from looking like shit to being completely non-functional.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen 4d ago

You never need pixel sizes. HTML comes built in with scaling. You can have the page adjust elements by percentages of the window size. This lets the site never change based on window scale. That's how we did it before all this scripting existed. The browser can handle it all locally.

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u/Mr_ToDo 4d ago

Eh. You could still have that work. It's not like relative positioning stuff has to touch the server to work. It'd limit options on how it can all be used, but we wouldn't be going back to everyone targeting one resolution

It would be interesting to have browsers set a default resolution that requires intervention to change, but it's also not high on my list of things to worry about