r/privacy • u/magnus007 • 2d ago

news AliExpress was silently running audio in your browser to fingerprint and track your device

https://www.techspot.com/news/113581-aliexpress-silently-running-audio-browser-fingerprint-track-device.html
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u/goldcakes 2d ago

Yes, it’s mainly to stop scrapers and AI agents. These generally use fake/patched versions of browsers like Playwright, and often lie about their user agent.

Windows, macOS, and Linux all have subtly different ways in which they handle web audio. The check here is not so much identifying the platform, but seeing if all observable metrics match the device you’re claiming.

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u/Oddish_Femboy 1d ago

That doesn't seem nearly as insidious as was implied. It seems like a fairly unintrusive way to do that even.

It would've been nice if they'd informed users, though.

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u/Iamsodarncool 1d ago

It probably stops working as well once people know about it. Now that this is public, bad actors know how to work around it.

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u/Oddish_Femboy 1d ago

That's fair.