[w3c/gamepad] id field in gamepad might have a persistent identifier? (#73)

(See also the email thread)

I have read in the past that the id field sometimes contains things like a serial number. Obviously this presents a very persistent tracking identifier.

Mozilla says: in Firefox it will contain three pieces of information separated by dashes (-):
Two 4-digit hexadecimal strings containing the USB vendor and product id of the controller
The name of the controller as provided by the driver. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad/id

How is this exposed in other browsers? It seems like it would be advantageous to require this string to _not_ contain uniquely identifying information and to Non-normatively suggest an algorithm to do so.


Florian suggest that we standardize the id attribute so the vendor and device id are in a consistent format and order.

He also indicated that the product name is displayed to the user to help them identify the control (they won't know vendor/device id of course.)

My concern is still that the product name may contain serial numbers or something similar that would uniquely identify a particular controller vs merely identifying it as that type of controller. Have other people seen this behavior? It seems it would be near-impossible to fix on the controller side (since it'd require controllers to be reflashed with new firmware...)

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