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This is the first time I’ve knowingly seen the Battery Status API used for fingerprinting. Inevitable, really, but this is the first time I’ve spotted it in the wild. 
Any developers not familiar with browser/device fingerprinting, I encourage you to please read up on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fi…
One very common and completely gross fingerprinting vector is to check which fonts you have installed. As the page loads, the script fires a 72px string of text into the page, iterates over a series of font-families, and sees what you’ve got.
This can cause real rendering and layout-thrashing problems as you’re constantly reading and writing styles from the page. Users will feel this pain.
The most commonly used string is ‘mmmmmmmmmmlli’. Read more in this whitepaper [PDF]: virpo.sk/browser-finger…
⚙️ Completely avoiding the moral and ethical questions surrounding fingerprinting, if you find you need to use these mechanisms (online banking, ecomm, betting and gaming), this is great use-case for Web Workers. Capture the information off of the main thread.
Whoa! On the subject of ethics and privacy, @smashingmag has launched a printed magazine! And the first issue is all about… Ethics & Privacy! smashingmagazine.com/printed-books/…
