How would you prevent that? If you want to use a feature, you need to know if that feature is available. So you add methods/functions to ensure that you can fail gracefully when something is not available. That availability is the fingerprint. I don't blame the browsers as much as asshats using the tool for malicious purposes. We're not going to ban hammers because someone uses them for things other than driving nails.
replyAnother one is "draw text, read back pixels" which is simultaneously a really effective fingerprint, and also cuts to the core of what we want a web browser to do. We can't refuse to draw text.
replyneed to license swe just like real engineers and make them have a responsibility to the public
replyAnd what about SWE from outside whatever jurisdiction that body issues those licenses? You cannot regulate your way out of tech problem if everyone is not subject to said regulations. Why people keep making comments like this is beyond me.
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replyIn the old days, we just sent the content and let the client figure out what to do with it. If you navigated to homestarrunner.com and you didn't have flash installed, you just got a message saying to install it, or worst case, a broken icon in a frame.
replyWe figured it out just fine.
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replyRight, but the client side did a query to see what was available and gracefully displayed a message. People are now sending the truthy response of the feature's availability back. You could be doing that as a legit bit of logging, or you could be doing that to be an asshat and deanonymize the user. The browser doesn't know the intent of being asked about a feature. And yes, it has been figured out just fine as a way for making someone money by selling information about you
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