Apple has deployed a system called Private Access Tokens that allows web servers to verify if a device is legitimate before granting access. This works by having the browser request a signed token from Apple proving the device is approved. While this currently has limited impact due to Safari's market share, there are concerns that attestation systems restrict competition, user control, and innovation by only approving certain devices and software. Attestation could lead to approved providers tightening rules over time, blocking modified operating systems and browsers. While proponents argue for holdbacks to limit blocking, business pressures may make that infeasible and Google's existing attestation does not do holdbacks. Fundamentally, attestation is seen as anti-competitive by potentially blocking competition between browsers and operating systems on the web.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 198 points 3 years ago (10 children)

"Sorry, your device appears to be running Linux, please only use approved Apple or Windows devices to log in, with our required surveillance system pro installed. Thanks."

  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    Companies can already do that

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 87 points 3 years ago (45 children)

    If a website doesn't want me to see their shit, then I guess i won't see their shit. I already have some sites that don't work because of my aggressive use of lists on my pihole, in addition to the usual browser plugins. If a site doesn't work now, I just move on. I don't give a shit about any site enough to put up with this type of bullshit.

  • source
  • hideshow 45 child comments
  • [–] 58 points 3 years ago (36 children)

    What if it's your bank's website? Or email provider? Or literally anything else you actually have to choose and can't pick? "It's okay because I don't think it affects me / I can ignore it" is always a bad reason to allow a bad thing happen.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 36 child comments
  • [+] 19 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (32 children)
  • [–] 38 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    Honestly, if you're telling people to run their own email host, you're either trolling or a moron.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    Yeah, because not only is it viable, they absolutely never get blocked! lol

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 23 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    It's pretty shitty for a company to force someone to use a phone app or go to something as vital as a bank just because they won't let the customer access the website. And there are plenty of reasons why someone wouldn't be able to go to the bank in person every time they needed to, or at least it'd be extremely inconvenient to (especially for small things like checking your balance or transactions). Not everyone has a phone either.

    Change your email provider? Run your own email like people should?

    I've never deleted my email before but I'm pretty sure that means losing access to your entire inbox that you've likely had for years and having to update your contacts, the emails for all the accounts you have under it, etc. And being blocked from the website means you won't be able to do any of those things through the official website. Does device atteststion prevent you from accessing your email through third party clients?

    Also, it's not exactly easy or practical to host your own email. And for many people that would mean spending money on servers. I read a blog post last year of someone who gave up hosting their own email after 23 years doing so.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 15 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    And how the fuck is a phone app an alternative for avoiding attestation??? A phone app is inherently attested by being distributed through the app store.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    On a rooted phone, they can still fail attestation, apparently. That's why Magisk Hide (or whatever it's called) became a thing, to hide that the device is rooted. Google Pay also apparently needs Magisk Hide to function.

    I don't trust my phone to store my payment details, so I don't care about Google Pay, and my bank's app works fine while rooted, so I don't have any personal experience with it, just what I've seen in every single root guide I've used in at least the last 4 years (if not longer; I don't remember how I rooted my previous phone.)

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago

    If a website doesn't want me to see their shit, then I guess i won't see their shit

    That's how I react to Twitter and Facebook requiring login to even view most things.

    Whatever you're showing isn't important enough to be worth me making an account.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    To see how your approach works, try using the Internet with Javascript turned off for reading text. You will realize you can't organize your life nowadays without bowing to what websites do technically.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 60 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Expect corporations to be lazy. Just look at how every website handles cookies now. They could do it smartly, limit their cookie exposure, or only send the messages to IPs in the EU. But they just put an "accept all cookies or get out" OK box on your screen. And that's what they're going to do once attestation gets popular.

    Sites will just require an attestation token and likely only accept ones from Safari and Chromium browsers since those are the ones pushing it. That will effectively make Firefox, Opera and other browsers incompatible with those websites. And once it catches on or becomes law somewhere, it'll be the entire internet. It's an extremely anticompetitive measure and it's internet-wide DRM. Fuck. that.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    But they just put an "accept all cookies or get out" OK box on your screen.

    Which doesn’t comply with GDPR

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago

    Which only affects companies doing business in the EU. Granted, that's most of the big players.

    Very grateful for the EU to unfuck most of the world from a lot of American regulatory capture.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    Opera is chromium based though.

    You dont even need this DRM bullshit to become law. Chrome will simply put a warning before entering websites without it that goes "this website doesnt use name of a technology the user doesnt understand and therefore might be dangerous". Thats it. Every and all websites will immediatly implement this DRM bullshit or die.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 34 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (8 children)

    Google mentioned these in their explainer (they don’t like that they’re fully masked): https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md#privacy-pass--private-access-tokens

    Cloudflare explains them more too: https://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-captchas-on-iphones-and-macs-using-new-standard/

    They are currently going through an IETF standardization: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/privacypass/about/

    You can also read the architecture. In general I do trust Cloudflare more than Google. I have no doubt shitty sites won’t fall back to a captcha and will instead block access though, with either solution.

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 30 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    In general I do trust Cloudflare more than Google.

    A large portion of the internet runs through Cloudflare's network though, so IMO they're just as much of a risk as Google.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    However unlike Google, CloudFlare doesn't have a history of killing off products just as users begin to adapt to them.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    That’s not why Google is harmful though - they’re harmful because almost all of their revenue comes from advertising - everything else they offer is just a funnel to gain data on the worlds population in order to better target advertising.

    As for cloudflare - they showed their true colours last year with kiwifarms. They’ll happily host the worst websites in the world as long as they don’t get bad press.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago

    Slight correction, generally cloudflare doesn’t host any sites (this is untrue in specific circumstances, but in your example they certainly didn’t host the site) - they just sit in front of existing sites and store some static assets, otherwise acting like a transparent reverse proxy.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago*

    The main risk with Cloudflare is that if they think your device is malicious, it gets very hard to browse the internet, as every site hosted behind Cloudflare starts showing CAPTCHAs or rate limiting you. This could get worse if new APIs that determine if you're legit don't like you for whatever reason.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago

    That still however doesn't relieve them. Whether they've killed of less products, IMHO still leaves them at the position that they route MASSIVE amounts of the entire internet.

    One point of failure or control is still a big risk, no matter how you turn it

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 23 points 3 years ago

    I'm with you there, but that seems like a reason to fight

    This would very likely be added to cloudflare by default (it would lower their costs), and that would put a solid chunk of the Internet behind the blackwall

  • source
  • [–] 20 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Back to the days of using a different web browser for each website. I remember the acid test, IE 5.5, etc. Not fun as a user or web developer.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    Actually I like this.

    All those people who've been trying to keep corporate technologies "open" were, in fact, working for the corporations to make people come to them. Most unknowingly, maybe. It's just, well, litany of Gendlin case. You rely on corporate power, even if you are trying to hide it and talk about "open Web".

    The most important thing is that we take ideologically corporate technology where it's not needed (there's been plenty of hypertext systems in history, some kinda successful, and all that JS and AJAX stuff and various frameworks on top are so complex not because of any usefulness, but because of the corporate goal of backward compatibility, lumping everything together and even intentional complexity to cut off competition, and a single space).

    We'd be just fine with a bunch of incompatible between themselves Hypercard-like things working over network. That's what I think.

    I really dislike Apple for what they've been in my somehow conscious years (born 1996), but things like Hypercard and Hotline (or KDX) from their older time seem to be just the right way to use personal computers.

    Any single space with propaganda of "fragmentation being bad" is either not immune to what has happened to the Web, or already compromised.

  • source
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›