Privacy

32169 readers

468 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

WebUSB. Could websites know what's connected to my computer? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Was browsing on the GrapheneOS website and came across a new thing called WebUSB, which is essentially a JS API through which GrapheneOS web installer worked.

This got me wondering, if website could read what's plugged into my computer like my phone or disks, isn't that a huge risk to privacy? I don't know how this works (haven't used it) so I would like to know about its privacy.

AFAIK Firefox doesn't allow this API, so that's a relief (I use librefox), but what about other browsers? I am getting a bit paranoid.

[Also, are there other APIs like these; which are a privacy nightmare that websites could use?]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] refalo 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yes there is a risk of bugs being exploited just like any other feature in a browser. Another example is WebRTC being used to de-cloak VPN users. I think WebGPU and/or WebGL also had exploits that allowed remote code execution or escaping the browser sandbox.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

WebRTC being used to de-cloak VPN users

The clock of my device always match with the location of the server of my VPN provider

[–] refalo 12 points 2 months ago

For those who actually think I said clock instead of cloak :)

https://voidsec.com/vpn-leak/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How van you do that? Im using fedora and Android om phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I manually set the ntp server of my device to match with the location of my VPN server and use an pp to see the time of my real location.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Im a noob, where to find NTP server and what is pp? I'm using fedora🙂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You don't need to change your ntp server exactly you can just set the time zone settings of your device (android)to match the same region of your VPN server. if you want to go a step further you have the option (not mandatorily) to change the NTP server of your device.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Okay. Thank you. I'm learning everyday 😄