Re: [vibration] privacy consideration PING comments

I have generally understood ‘fingerprinting’ as meaning *reading* a set of the device (or user) that uniquely identifies it (sure, using active APIs sometimes to gather the data).  I don’t see how a vibration API tells you anything about the device (except maybe the 1-bit “can it vibrate?”).

So, is this API a fingerprint risk, or a beacon risk?

> On Feb 27, 2016, at 10:43 , Lukasz Olejnik (W3C) <lukasz.w3c@gmail.com> wrote:
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> 6. Applications might want to give indications when vibration is in use.
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> Definitely, there SHOULD be an option to indicate it...
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> I don't think that's right. There is an indication that vibration is in use: the device is *moving*.
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> It is, if the user is monitoring this device at that very moment, and also including your considerations below (thanks!).
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> So there are a couple of more interesting things:
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> When a foregrounded page has permission for vibration, there should be an indicator. The same applies to a backgrounded page - I think something like the audio playing thing that browsers have started doing would be useful. Indeed, it would copy a familiar iconic paradigm from the world of phones which have had vibrators for more than two decades (and therefore is unlikely to have any IPR issues outstanding).
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> There are plenty of use cases for a backgrounded page having vibrate permission - the simple one being the same as the phone, that it is less obtrusive as a way of requesting attention, and works without actually seeing the device.
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> And finally, of course it is important that all such notifications or status indicators are actually *accessible* - have sufficient contrast, are announced to screen readers / magnifiers, etc. While this is something that browsers should be doing, rather than technically part of the spec, it is worth noting that in the privacy considerations and mitigations, and tracking whether we have acieved the goal. A spec that provides theoretical accessibility but is implemented consistently in a way that discriminates against users with disabilities really isn't good enough.
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> This is, in essence, somewhat similar to what I was thinking about for long now. I do hope to make the PDF public asap, definitely I'll post it to the list.
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> Best
> Lukasz
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> cheers
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> Chaals
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> -- 
> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
>  chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com

David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 29 February 2016 21:26:42 UTC