Mozilla Warning - Google Chrome allows websites to capture your privacy

Update: 2021-09-23 17:15 IST

Google Chrome

Google Chrome has received an update to version 94, adding new features and improvements along with security features. New features in Google Chrome 94 include the recently introduced application programming interface (API) for idle detection. This feature has been perceived as too invasive and has a negative impact on user privacy. Now, the creator of the Firefox browser, Mozilla, has criticized the feature, claiming that Google Chrome's idle detection API could allow websites to invade your privacy.

With more than 60 per cent of the market share in Windows and Android, the two largest platforms, Google Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world. With the arrival of Chrome 94, the Idle Detection API has been enabled in the browser, allowing websites to learn when you are using your PC and when you are not. The feature could be useful for application developers and advertising service companies who want to learn how their web applications and services are used.

Mozilla's head of web standards, Tantek Çelik, took to GitHub to explain that the new ide detection API should be labelled harmful and encourage the development of simpler and less privacy-invasive methods to achieve the same goals. "As it is currently specified, I consider the Idle Detection API too tempting of an opportunity for surveillance capitalism motivated websites to invade an aspect of the user's physical privacy, keep longterm records of physical user behaviours, discerning daily rhythms (e.g. lunchtime), and using that for proactive psychological manipulation (e.g. hunger, emotion, choice)," Çelik stated on GitHub.

According to the report, not only Mozilla raised concerns about the new idle detection API. The WebKit development team working on the browser engine that powers Apple's Safari said there did not appear to be a "strong enough use case for this API" and noted that there was no guarantee that a user would not return to the device. Similarly, users could be using other devices. "We're definitely not going to let a website know all the devices a given user might be using at any given point. That's a very serious breach of the said user's privacy," explained WebKit engineer Ryosuke Niwa. 

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