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Chrome 94 is officially discontinued. As is always the case with a new browser version, there is something to be excited about. However, there are also some things to be skeptical about, including a feature that Mozilla allows monitoring on you.
How Chrome’s New Feature Is “Harmful”
Chrome 94 introduces a controversial inactivity detection API. Basically, websites can ask Chrome to report when a user with an open webpage is inactive on their device. It’s not just about your use of Chrome or a particular website: if you’ve walked away from your computer and aren’t using any apps, Chrome may tell the website that you’re not actively using your computer. .
As you might expect, the developers are loving this new feature. Anything that can provide them with more information about how users interact with their apps is positive. It’s enabled by default in Chrome 94, but that might not be as bad as it sounds. As with using your webcam or microphone, a prompt will ask for your permission before using your inactive data on a particular website.
The API comes with its fair share of adversaries, including rival browser maker Mozilla. The people behind Firefox say it creates an “opportunity for surveillance capitalism.” Mozilla’s web standards manager Tantek Çelik commented on GitHub:
As currently specified, I see the Idle Detection API as too tempting an opportunity for websites driven by surveillance capitalism to invade an aspect of the user’s physical privacy, keep long-term records of behaviors physical users, discern daily rhythms (eg lunchtime) and use that for proactive psychological manipulation (eg hunger, emotion, choice)…
So I propose to mark this API as harmful and encourage further incubation, perhaps reconsidering simpler and less invasive alternative approaches to solving motivating use cases.
Of course, Mozilla competes with Google Chrome, so it’s no surprise that a competitor might have strong words about something Google is doing.
However, it’s not just Mozilla. Apple’s Safari browser uses WebKit, and the WebKit development team has a lot to say about the new API as well. Here’s what Ryosuke Niwa, an Apple software engineer who works on WebKit, said:
It doesn’t seem like a strong enough use case for this API. For starters, there is no guarantee that the user will not immediately return to the device. Plus, who is such a service supposed to know what other device user might be using at any given time? We’re definitely not going to let a website know of all the devices that a given user might be using at any given time. This is a very serious violation of the privacy of said user. Seems to me that it is best to leave such a removal / distribution mechanism to the underlying operating systems / web browsers.
Chrome 94 is here!
We’ll have to wait and see how the developers use this new API in Chrome. It could end up being an absolute privacy nightmare, or it could be okay.
And, anyway, it’s worth remembering that websites can’t be notified of your inactivity status unless they ask you first and you agree to share it.
Either way, there are good things to come in Google Chrome 94, and it’s worth downloading them just for security fixes.
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