[Bug 22910] Needs non-normative Privacy Consideration section

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=22910

--- Comment #1 from Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> ---
Propose the following draft text, to be added as a new top level section or a
sub-section of the Introduction. Note that this proposal is little more than an
outline intended to be elaborated after further discussion in the TF.

X Privacy Considerations

This section is non-normative.

Fingerprinting

Malicious applications may be able to fingerprint users or user agents by
detecting or enumerating the list of key systems that are supported.

Tracking

If user agents permit keys to be re-used between origins, without performing
any secondary operations such as key derivation that includes the origin, then
it may be possible for two origins to collude and track a unique user by
recording their ability to access a common key.

Super-cookies

With the exception of ephemeral keys, its often desirable for applications to
strongly associate users with keys. These associations may be used to enhance
the security of authenticating to the application, such as using a key stored
in a secure element as a second factor, or may be used by users to assert some
identity, such as an e-mail signing identity. As such, these keys often live
longer than their counterparts such as usernames and passwords, and it may be
undesirable or prohibitive for users to revoke these keys. Because of this,
keys may exist longer than the lifetime of the browsing context [HTML] and
beyond the lifetime of items such as cookies, thus presenting a risk that a
user may be tracked even after clearing such data. This is especially true for
keys that were pre-provisioned for particular origins and for which no user
interaction was provided.

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Received on Tuesday, 13 August 2013 05:34:04 UTC