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What is the point of all the information given out by your browser? (literature.cafe)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca
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So the other day someone linked to a website that highlighted how much information is just gifted to any place you visit on the web.

I'm aware of some of it being intrinsic to the manner of connection. A website knowing your IP (even if that is the IP of the vpn or tor exit node you're using) is basically essential to the function of the internet. Why everything else though? What fucking idiot/asshole decided to even have an api for your gpu? Why the fuck is my browser reporting on the battery status? Light/dark mode? Visibility (whether or not the tab is 'active', the fuck?!? My OS?!!???!?!!!?!?!?

As a side question, why is the capability built in by a browser, but the user is never given a choice about whether or not any of this is shared?

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[โ€“] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

I can hate them both. 90% of this info has no legitimate reason to leave the clients machine. In a world where open source development is still legal and available, I don't see why its so hard to have a web browser that doesn't broadcast every single hardware detail about your machine.

I hate how this situation is spoken about as a lost cause. People in the comments section here are acting like this information is required for the web to work at all. Probably weren't alive at a time where websites could be stored offline because they didn't expect constant client validation. Multiple comments acting like light/dark mode requires a server request, and couldn't just be handled offline by the clients browser choosing how to render stuff after its been downloaded. Bet they think the web server needs to know the time zone too.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 5 months ago*

    90% of this info has no legitimate reason to leave the clients machine.

    Theres no way to control that.

    People in the comments section here are acting like this information is required for the web to work at all. Probably weren't alive at a time where websites could be stored offline because they didn't expect constant client validation.

    Some of us are professional software developers old enough to have started programming in Windows 95. Rather than being dismissive, maybe you should question whether you have a full understanding of how everything works.

    Multiple comments acting like light/dark mode requires a server request, and couldn't just be handled offline by the clients browser choosing how to render stuff after its been downloaded. Bet they think the web server needs to know the time zone too.

    Light / dark mode doesn't require a server request. It's a client side API. The client side JavaScript or CSS can request to know what mode the system is wants and can adjust itself accordingly.

    The problem is that there's no way of preventing the client from knowing what mode it ends up in and sending that information back. The client need to be able to query what's rendered for a variety of reasons, not least of which is maintaining backwards compatibility with all of the 90s and 00s era web APIs that use these to update what's displayed.

    You can disable JavaScript if you want, and that will prevent much of this information being sent back, but you'll also break most websites because most websites need client side JavaScript to provide a modern UX that people expect, because at a fundamental level, dynamic software that responds to what the user is doing and adjusts itself accordingly is more powerful then static software that just consists of a preset information laid out. You can build basic websites that consist of just static documents and forms and work without JavaScript but you're limited to basic document sites without interactivity like blogs.

    And guess what happens then? Everyone downloads programs and applications for anything with interactivity and they have even deeper access to system information.

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